


The Center Of Gravity Of Our Little Sphere

by luninosity



Category: X-Men (Movies), X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Victorian, Charles Being Awesome, Developing Relationship, Falling In Love, First Time, Fluff and Angst, Gift Fic, Happy Ending, Holidays, Hurt/Comfort, Learning To Communicate, Low-Powered AU, M/M, Protective!Erik, Sexual Content, Shaw Being Evil, Slight D/s Elements
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-08
Updated: 2012-12-17
Packaged: 2017-11-20 15:54:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 30,248
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/587085
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/luninosity/pseuds/luninosity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For a prompt involving Erik as a department-store Santa, and Charles as one of his elves...which my brain naturally decided meant the great late-Victorian era rise of Sears and Macy's and so on, plus epic hurt/comfort, misuse of H.G. Wells, hot cocoa, and falling in love.</p><p>Slightly edited because I decided it'd be easier to read with chapter divisions!</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [telperion_15](https://archiveofourown.org/users/telperion_15/gifts).



> Low-powered Victorian AU story! Because that's where my brain goes, evidently: old-fashioned Victorian Christmas cards. 
> 
> Warnings for death of a villain near the end. And also some historical liberties along the way, mostly regarding the assumptions that a- mutant powers exist and b- marriage reform movements of the period included gay marriage rights. (Though, for the record: historical hot-drink take-away cups, made of wood, were in use as early as the 1600s. So that's not an anachronism, I promise! Also all the scientists Charles and Hank refer to are real and were working around the turn of the century.)

_And all these things…were seen against a sky that was bluish-black and spangled still, in spite of the sunlight, with a few surviving stars. Strange! the very forms and textures of the stones were strange. It was all strange: the feeling of one’s body was unprecedented, every other movement ended in a surprise…_

_It was not like the beginning of a journey; it was like the beginning of a dream._

—H. G. Wells, _The First Men In the Moon_

 

_December 10, 1897_

“Hello! I do believe I’m your elf!”

Erik stares at blue eyes and floppy hair, inches below his own intimidating height, and says, “What?”

It’s not as if he’s even here voluntarily. Well, no, strictly speaking he is, he’s standing in the back offices of the Xavier Building, surrounded by twinkly lights and seasonal decorations, of his own volition. He could leave. He could leave any time.

He eyes the door, longingly. The steel frame of the building hums back, a little smug. It knows he’s not going to leave.

“Oh,” chirp the blue eyes, “sorry, that’s not the best way to introduce myself, is it? I’m sorry, I do like the holidays, I tend to get a bit carried away, but I suppose you’d rather know my actual name, if we’re going to be doing this together, and it’s Charles, in fact. I mean my name.”

Erik, helpless in the flood, can only say “What?” again.

“Oh…sorry.” Charles grins at him. It’s a devastating grin. The kind of grin that sends armies into battle and knocks women to their knees. To his mild disgust, Erik’s not immune.

Charles is even wearing spruce-tree green. Granted, it’s a green waistcoat, not a costume; however, even Erik, who knows nothing about fashion or the trends of the turning century, can tell that it’s probably expensive. Imported silk. Perhaps something that’s come in on one of the gleaming tall ships, out there in the shipyards, carrying goods back and forth across the ocean. Their metal always sings to him. Exotic. Foreign shores and open seas, here at the broadening of the world.

Charles’s eyes are the color of the sea, he thinks, for no reason at all.

“You’re volunteering,” Charles says, patiently, “as our Saint Nicholas this year. For the festivities. For the next few weeks. Are you not?”

“I’m…yes?” He hadn’t wanted to. That’s the involuntary part. But Emma’d looked up at him coolly across her secretarial desk—the only other item of furniture in their tiny office—and observed, “Someday, sugar, you’ll be able to do business without ever having to talk to people, but here and now in the great city of New York personal reputation still counts for something, now get high society to think you’re capable of faking friendliness,” and then handed him the note inquiring as to the availability of any employee volunteers for the Christmas celebrations, the pageants and the storefront photographs.

He hadn’t asked how she’d acquired that memo. Emma has ways, and they generally leave things at that; she works for Erik because she wants to, because she fully expects great things from him, not because she has to, as she’s made quite clear. And, after all, as a successful architect—and the designer of the building—Erik technically _has_ been an Xavier employee, though equally technically he isn’t any longer, or he won’t be once a certain C.F. Xavier signs off on the final plans for the renovated rooftop level.

Erik’s never actually met C.F. Xavier. He’s not certain he wants to. Not after the memo that’d come back saying _Yes but can we put a sculpture in the atrium, visitors might like something to look at while they wait, and if that means altering the angle of the roof a bit don’t worry about the expense!_ Erik’d stared at the collection of words, tried for five minutes to envision the sort of person who could put them all together, and then given up for good.

He’d put the sculpture in the atrium, though. After he’d gone down there, stood in the center of the big bare room, envisioned a curving sweep of frozen metal flame, and then been forced to admit that yes, perhaps the space needed something after all.

The memo that’d turned up the following morning had simply said _Beautiful!_ Erik’d shaken his head at the ink and the exclamation point, and promptly forgotten about the eccentricities of his putative employer.

He loves his work. He genuinely does. He loves the way that his designs, his metal, can change the shape of the world. That’s all he’s ever needed.

That’s not true, of course. He’s needed other things. But those things belong to a long time ago. Another country.

He touches the closest of his walls, here in the cramped and holiday-filled storage room, and hopes the movement’s unobtrusive. Quick blue eyes follow the gesture. Damn.

“The building does like you. And you like it. I can tell.”

“I…what do you mean, you can tell? And…why are you here, again? I thought only the maintenance workers had keys to this section.” Erik, of course, has never needed keys. And he’d wanted to confront his impending humiliation for the first time on his own, with no curious witnesses.

He wonders, briefly, what his mother'd think. It's not as if Erik's been a particularly good Jewish person—or even a particularly good person in general—in the years since her death, but he can't help a tiny twinge of guilt regardless.

But he's doing it for her. With enough connections, enough commissions, enough wealth, he can find out what he needs to know. Can do what needs to be done. He knows it won't bring her peace, but she's beyond caring, by now. Erik doesn't believe in peace. But he isn't beyond caring.

“Oh, well,” Charles says, eyes positively mischievous now, “I could ask you the same thing, about the keys. And as for why I’m here, I’m volunteering, too. Just for the holidays, just for this year. And to answer your first question…” _This is how I can tell_.

The words brush across the surface of Erik’s mind, gentle and clear and surprising, contradictory impressions of tea and warmth and the sparkling chill of frozen ices, unexpected flavors dissolving over his tongue, pineapple and mango and sugar and cream and cold giving way to sweetness.

He can’t answer for a second, astonished. Those sparkles slide all the way to his bones, and stay there.

 _Sorry_ , Charles apologizes again, _I didn’t mean to startle you. And I’m not—this actually is a bit difficult, proper words, I mean, I have to focus, so…_ “This is easier, I think. Are you—did that—does this bother you? I promise I don’t generally run around leaping into people’s heads, most of them aren’t that appealing anyway and it’s harder than you’d think to isolate—never mind, I’m sorry, are you all right? Your mind is absolutely brilliant, you know. Those abilities…”

“Charles,” Erik says, because he can’t think of anything else. When he licks his lips, he can taste the pineapple. “You can…read minds?” Intellectually, he’s always known that other gifted people must exist; his secretary, after all, can turn her skin to diamond, if necessary, and can sense strong emotions in the air before walking into a room. And there’s technically government regulation requiring registration of the gifted, though in Erik’s experience the average man on the street considers the existence of such abilities as folklore, legend, much like the famed crocodiles of the city’s sewers.

The average man on the street has no idea. This fact entertains him, occasionally, in cynical moments. More cynical than usual, that is.

“A bit, yes.” Oh. Charles is answering his question. And that voice, those eyes, are decidedly not cynical at all.

“Mostly emotions. Sometimes thoughts, if they’re very clear. The term for it is telepathic connection, if you’re wondering.” Charles pauses, and licks his lips, a gesture at which Erik completely fails to not stare, and they stand there in the overstuffed storeroom among all the inquisitive decorations, just looking at each other, for a while. Erik realizes, very slowly, that Charles is smiling, and then belatedly registers the expression on his own face for what it is, matching.

“I meant it,” Charles says, “about yours being brilliant. You can feel…everything around us, can’t you? This whole enthusiastic city. And it loves you in return. Do you know, you might be able to fly?”

“…what?”

“The earth’s magnetic fields could—”

“ _No_ , Charles.”

“Oh…all right, then.” Another grin. “But you would also look outstanding in a cape. Very god-like.”

“No!” He’s known Charles for all of five minutes. He wonders how many more times he’s going to say the word no in the course of the next five. He wonders why he doesn’t mind.

Blue eyes dive back into a pile of boxes. Then out again. “Speaking of costumes, I think I’ve found yours, it’s over here. Would you like to try it on?”

Erik gazes at the pile of red and white fluff, and just says, “Would _you_?”

“Not at all. But you volunteered for this. Anyway, I get to wear…these.” The shoes have bells on them. They jingle. Two pairs of eyes study them, for a while.

“Would you mind terribly if I…disposed of the bells?”

“I’m going to pretend I’ve no knowledge of what you’re contemplating whatsoever. In fact, I wasn’t even here. I shall be as surprised as you are, later.”

The bells end up crumpled into a silenced heap of metal, in the corner. Charles looks at them a bit sadly, after.

“Don’t tell me you’re changing your mind now.”

“No…they’re just so forlorn, aren’t they, over there…I feel somewhat guilty.”

“Charles,” Erik sighs, and then, out of some inexplicable need to see ocean-colored eyes dance again, grabs the pathetic scraps and twists and spins and hands Charles the result. Their fingers brush, as he does. Skin against skin. The whole world crackles.

Charles blinks, then looks up, and the dusty storeroom turns glorious, washed in blue. “You turned them into an star. For me.”

“I…”

“You did. And I still don’t know your name.”

Erik opens his mouth, stops, looks at this pixie-sized person he’s just met, the person who’s made him smile and called him brilliant and treats his abnormality as if it’s a gift, the only other person Erik’s ever met who sees those abilities as not frightening or potentially exploitable but as magnificent. Charles has dust on one cheek and hair falling into his eyes and he’s far too young and optimistic to be anyone Erik should want, ever, standing there holding Erik’s ludicrous spur-of-the-moment gift in his hand.

Those eyes are so very blue.

“…Erik. Lehnsherr.”

“Oh, you’re the architect!” Even wider eyes, now. “No wonder this building loves you! Though…do you actually qualify as an employee? I mean…not that I’m objecting to being your elf, I would love to do this with you, I mean the holidays, I mean—I suspect perhaps I ought to start this sentence over, I’m sorry, would you like to go and have coffee with me?”

This time Erik’s the one who blinks, because he can’t’ve just heard that correctly. No matter how badly his ears, and other body parts, are demanding that he believe it. “Did…you just say…”

“Was that too forward of me? Sorry again.” But the eyes’re sparkling, brighter than all the damnable twinkly lights, and the mental impression, on the heels of the audible sentence, is swift and amused and not really sorry at all.

And Erik isn’t sorry either. Because, yes, Charles _is_ too young and too optimistic for him, all bright-eyed and plainly used to comfort and believing the world to be kind, and yes, Erik should turn around and walk away, right now, leaving behind all that dangerous temptation.

But he can’t. There’s such expectation, in those eyes. And Erik somehow just can’t be the one to let him down. That desire, combined with his own—well, _other_ desires—stages a mutiny against his better judgment, and wins.

“Yes,” he says. Yes.

“Yes,” Charles says, and smiles, not the blinding grin this time, but something smaller, more private, almost like hope. “Coffeehouse around the corner? We can walk. I like the cold.”

They walk. Charles hides a smile at Erik’s expert manipulation of the lock, and then doesn’t bother hiding the next smile, when they step outside and the winter envelops them with all its might, and Erik takes one look at Charles’s rolled-up sleeves and inadequate vest and yanks off his own coat. “Here.”

“Oh—you don’t have to—”

“I know you said you like the cold. But you cannot possibly like freezing to death.”

“Oh, if you insist…” Charles wraps himself up in the fabric despite the feeble protest, as they fall back into step. Natural. Easy. Faultless rhythm. The lights of the stores, the shimmer and bustle of the city, clamor around them. Brand-new electric lamps. Paving-stones and wetly gleaming cabs. The dazzle of window displays, Macy’s, Bloomingdale’s, the Marble Palace, Andrew Saks’s just-opened store. Greeting-card perfection in the era of steam and science, hiding the dirt beneath a coat of wintry grandeur.

Charles, surrounded by the folds of Erik’s coat, looks all of fifteen years old, hatless and pink-cheeked and excited about the world. When he puts a hand on Erik’s arm, hopping over a puddle of melted snow, Erik nearly chokes on his next inhale.

The coffeehouse is body-packed and spice-scented, inside. Charles breathes in appreciatively and shrugs out of Erik’s coat and hands it back and Erik tries not to be disappointed by this.

“…you’re ordering tea? In this place?”

“Well…I’ve begun to suspect I’m never going to be acclimated enough for American coffee. _How_ are you drinking that, without sugar?”

“Like this.” Erik takes a sip, larger than he means to, just to prove the point, and then mentally curses his own lack of forethought, and his resultant mouthful of scalding liquid. Distractions, he thinks, desperately. It’d be fantastic if he were actually competent at any sort of polite small talk.

“Acclimated, you said…you’re not American, are you?”

“What gives it away,” Charles says, very deadpan, “is it the accent,” but those eyes’re glinting, treasure in the depths.

So Erik says, consideringly, “No, it’s the tea, Charles, no self-respecting American would ever drink leaves boiled in hot water when there’s coffee available,” and Charles starts laughing, delightedly.

“Fair enough. And you’ve not even seen me with hot cocoa, yet. I’m warning you now, I do not share cocoa easily.”

Erik swallows. Pictures Charles licking molten chocolate from those pink lips. Is all at once very grateful for the large wooden table between them.

Charles leans across the table. Rests his chin on an ungloved hand. “In response to your question, however, I have dual citizenship. American, and British. I grew up here—well, more or less—but I went to Oxford as soon as—it’s been years since I’ve been back. I only _have_ been back for a month or two, in fact. I never thought—it does take some getting used to. So that’s me. What about you? I've heard your name, you know. You’re quite famous.”

“Not yet.”

“Well, you will be. You aren’t American, either, though? I thought as much, earlier.”

“Stay out of my _head_ , Charles.” And then, because Charles has glanced down at the voiceless tea in response and therefore Erik’s feeling irrationally guilty, “German. Originally. Not for a long time. I…spent several years traveling.” Charles looks up, at that. The steam from his tea drifts ceilingward, and tangles in those eyelashes. Demands all of Erik’s attention. He loses the thread of what he’s saying, for a second.

He’s always known that he’s attracted to men. That’s been a fact, a constant, like the purr of iron in his blood, at the heart of the world. It’s not an uncommon desire, and it’s at least tolerated, these days, if not accepted. Special. Different. And Erik doesn’t mind being different. He’s not ashamed.

He’s also never been good at relationships, never good at approaching anyone, at trusting them with himself. The few encounters he’s ever had have been brief, and discreet, and mercenary, and practical, a release of pent-up tension.

Charles gazes at him with those endless eyes, managing to radiate apology and exuberance all at once, and Erik finds himself, suddenly, _overwhelmed_ by tension. In very specific places. Thank god they’re sitting down.

“So you enjoy traveling,” Charles says, plainly filling in the conversational gap that Erik’s lapse has opened up. “Any other hobbies? Aside from volunteering to be my—to dress up as Saint Nicholas for the holiday festivities, of course.”

“I’m supposed to be making myself more approachable,” Erik admits, and Charles starts snickering, so hard he nearly drops his tea. Erik puts out a hand and catches it, cheating just a bit because that’s a helpful metal spoon, and earns himself a grin. “Still brilliant.” _You seem quite approachable to me._

 _You say that to everyone who breaks into storage rooms with you, do you?_ “And as far as hobbies…you don’t happen to play chess…”

The laughter echoes through both their thoughts. Warmer than the tea. Heating them from the inside out. _Considering that you’re the only person I’ve ever broken into storage rooms with, yes!_ “And…I may occasionally happen to play. Once in a while. If I have an opponent willing to put up with me. They keep a set behind the bar, here.”

“Do they,” Erik says, and catches the bartender’s eye.

Hours later, the snow is tumbling down, and the herds of intoxicated young men are staggering about declaiming post-pub Christmas carols to the sky, and Erik’s ahead in the number of wins, but only by one game. Half the inhabitants of the coffeehouse’ve been betting on them, drawn by the intensity and Charles’s laughter. Erik’s vaguely exasperated by this audience—does the population of New York City have nothing better to do?—but he might also potentially be enjoying himself. Especially while he’s winning.

Charles gets that merry look in blue eyes, the one that Erik’s learned by now to be exceedingly wary of, and moves a bishop. “Check.”

“Hmm. Are you certain you wish to do that?”

“Yes.”

“All right, then.” Charles’s bishop disappears. Too simple. Erik contemplates the board, wondering what he’s just missed.

He’d been slightly worried by Charles’s phrasing, when the suggestion’d been made. Had wondered whether he’d have to throw games, to get those jewel-shaded eyes to smile. Instead he’s barely keeping up. And it’s _fun_.

He probably should’ve been more suspicious about Charles knowing the precise location of the chessboard behind the bar.

Charles taps at a pawn. This move doesn’t appear to do anything. Behind them, some money changes hands.

Charles looks up at him, widens those eyes, exaggeratedly innocent, compelling. “Your move.”

“…what? Oh. Sorry. Here.”

“Oh, Erik,” Charles says, and moves another deceptively innocuous pawn. “Sorry.”

“You—did you just checkmate me _with two pawns and a knight?”_ It crosses his mind, also, to wonder why Charles is apologizing for that fact; but he doesn’t say that aloud. Not to all the onlookers.

“You tend to underestimate the pawns.” Charles stretches in his chair, which puts all the compact muscles on display. Erik’s powerless to not stare. “And I think perhaps we ought to end there, for the night, don’t you? Call it a truce? It’s getting a bit late…”

“Oh—” It is, in fact. Neither of them has noticed. Outside, the snow cuddles up to the windowpane; inside, the heat of bodies and hot beverages cloud over the glass. The crowd disperses around them, now that the excitement’s dwindling. And Erik finds himself reluctant to leave.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Charles says, and smiles. “I’m planning to demand a rematch. I really ought to be going, though, I’ve got class in the morning and—”

“You have—are you a _student_?”

Charles blinks at him. Twice. Then drops his face into his hands and starts laughing. “Oh, god…do I really look that young? Honestly?”

“You—”

“Is it the hair? It is the hair, isn’t it…”

“The—”

“I’m twenty-six.” Charles looks up, blue eyes sparkling, brighter than the fairy-tale lights outside. “I have to _teach_ in the morning. My class. I’m a professor. At the lovely and recently-renovated Columbia University, in fact, and that’s partly why, they’re attempting to expand their course offerings now that they’ve got the new location, which is charming, by the way, my office has a wonderful view of—”

“You’re a _professor_.” He doesn’t know much about the American—or the British—university system, but he does have the impression that twenty-six is still quite young.

“Er…yes.” Charles now looks faintly embarrassed. “And yes, it is a bit…I earned my doctorate last year, but I entered university quite a few years early, you see…in any case, it’s the last day of the term. Holidays and all that. I’ll have mountains of grading to do, after today. Everests of grading.” He doesn’t look especially bothered by this fact, however. Only takes a last sip of long-forgotten and now-cold tea, and then makes a rueful little face at the cup, and then smiles.

Erik doesn’t say _I love you_ , because that would be out of the question, they’ve just met and he doesn’t even know Charles’s last name and it’s not as if Erik knows anything about love anyway.

He does say, “Can I walk you home?”

And Charles turns the smile on him, brighter than the starlight on the snow, and says “Yes.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Charles POV, in which some revelations occur.

_December 14, 1897_

Charles believes that he might be in love. This means that there’s a problem. And it’s a problem he’s caused for himself, unfortunately.

Over the last four days, he’s become very certain of both those things. Over the last four days, amid the snowfall and the determinedly cheery tinsel-coated city and Erik’s tentative smiles, the ones that appear and vanish like stray beams of sunlight venturing out from heavy barricades, Charles has had the best moments of his entire life.

Erik had walked him home, that first night, to the tiny faculty living quarters that he’d been allotted, and smiled at him again, in the doorway. Had insisted that Charles wear, and keep, his enormous coat. His thoughts’d been insistent, too, a wordless jumble of anticipation and astonishment and protectiveness and giddy excitement, and Charles had understood because he was feeling all of those same emotions, equally strong.

Over the last four days, they’ve played chess eleven times—Charles is ahead, in the number of wins, but not for long, he’s sure—had lunch together twice, and dinner three times. The second night, Charles’d put his hand on Erik’s, hopping into the hansom cab as it paused to collect them. He’d pretended it’d been for support, and hoped that Erik wouldn’t notice the thunder of his pulse, or possibly hoped that Erik would.

Erik’d looked at him, complicated eyes surprised and opaque. And then had moved a hand, in the back of the cab, an almost unnoticeable drift of fingertips, and picked up Charles’s hand again.

Charles glances down at his hand. Smiles. He’s not wearing gloves, because he’s forgotten them for the hundredth time. But he doesn’t mind, because Erik will scowl at him, mutter dire comments about frostbite, and then wrap Charles’s fingertips up in his.

Erik’s come to meet him, in his office, bringing tea and coffee and a welcome distraction from all the grading. Has listened to Charles expound on Darwin’s theories and natural selection and biological advantages long past the point where any rational person would’ve backed slowly away. Has met all of Charles’s graduate students, bespectacled Henry and perpetually half-awake Sean and quietly rough-edged and cynical Alex. They’d regarded each other with some wariness, but had, eventually, managed to bond over engineering theories and some mutual mocking of Charles’s apparent lack of common sense. Charles had pretended to ignore this piece of the discussion, and continued wearing Erik’s coat because he’d left his own someplace. Again.

Erik’d sighed, and told him to keep it—“You’ll only need it again next time”—and Charles’d sighed, caught between the annoyed awareness that this was likely true and the excitement of thinking he’d get to see Erik another time, and then admitted, inaudibly, privately, that he liked being warm. And Erik had smiled.

Charles has watched Erik sketch designs on a scraps of paper, elegant sweeps of pen that transform the imagined lines into practical plans, new skyscrapers, new creations. Erik’s put up—surprisingly well—with Charles’s book-purchasing expeditions, which tend to look less like shopping and more like half the contents of the store have elected to follow them home. The winter-kaleidoscope eyes’d regarded Charles’s scientific fiction selections with some amusement; Charles had promptly handed him copies of _Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea_ and _The Time Machine_ , with some very pointed eyebrow raising. Erik’d not said anything about the books for long enough that Charles had begun wondering whether he’d simply set them aside upon reaching home, and then, out of nowhere, had observed, in the middle of a stroll through holiday lights, that Captain Nemo’s methods had been flawed.

They’d tumbled headlong into a debate about justice and vengeance and appropriate strategies, after that one, Charles arguing passionately that Nemo could’ve been capable of such immense contributions to science if he’d chosen to remain part of the world, and Erik pointing out that to such a man, the world must be undeserving of his contributions, only his enmity. Charles had kissed him, for the first time, in the midst of that argument, words flying like sparks to timber, setting the world alight.

A quick kiss. A breathtaking impact of lips against lips, dry and sweet and fleeting, public and unashamed.

Erik’d been a bit slow to react, inaudibly startled— _never felt this/anything like this/so beautiful/want/can I?_ , Charles heard, very swiftly—but hadn’t pulled back, or retreated. Had licked his lips, eyes dark and thoughtful, and put his arm around Charles’s shoulders, as they walked.

Erik’s met Charles’s sister. This was, at some point, inevitable. It’d gone surprisingly well, despite her tendency to make suggestive silent comments about Erik’s backside for Charles to both hear and then pretend desperately not to hear. Erik’d been fascinated by her abilities; Raven’d been thrilled to have someone new to show off for, had turned herself into Charles, Erik, various friends, a kitten, a reindeer just to be seasonally appropriate. Erik had called her magnificent, which of course she is; Charles, trying very hard not to be jealous, had gone out into the tiny other room to make tea, himself and the stove and the kettle. It’s not a big space. Really only enough for said stove and one body, plus all his conflicted emotions.

Magnificent. And he’d remembered the feeling of Erik’s lips on his. Remembered, also, that even now, social reform in the age of empire notwithstanding, acceptance of those desires comes slowly to the world at large. And it’s easier to kiss women, and pretend.

Charles comprehends that pretense, because he’s done it too, though not any more. It’s about reputation. Respect. And what’s expected of a member of his family. He knows precisely how easy or not easy all the stages are, because he’s been through them all, on his own: conformity, anxiety, rebellion, studied reckless carelessness. He sometimes looks back at those years, and ends up amused or alarmed or both at once. He’d been so concerned about what the world might think, then; even the defiance had been part of proving a point. He’d been so lonely, back then.

You still are, says that small voice in his head. He ignores it, because it’s true, because he’s beginning to hope that it might not have to be true.

The kettle’d shrilled at him far more quickly than he’d been expecting, almost instantly, really. He’d jumped, tripped over nothing at all, and turned around to find winter-moss eyes looking into his, long fingers catching his arm, tentative concern and affection in those thoughts.

Charles suspects that Erik’s been very lonely, as well, on his own.

They’ve wandered through the open grassy space of the Park, listening to Dickens being read aloud, _A Christmas Carol_ resounding through the frosty air. Erik’d bought them both hot cocoa; Charles had finished his off too quickly and then determinedly avoided gazing longingly at his cup. Erik had put a solid arm around him, and, while Charles was busy being distracted by this development, had traded cups, and let Charles have the end of his.

They’ve managed the first two days of dressing up and smiling for the visitors and the photographers, with, if not grace, at least some sort of good humor. Erik looks at children with much the same expression he’d employ for incomprehensible extraterrestrial life-forms, though fortunately it’s mostly hidden beneath the false beard, and says as little as possible, but he's not precisely unfriendly, and the children gaze at him wide-eyed. Charles smiles for both of them, employs his own abilities in a less than entirely scrupulous manner to ensure that all the children remain happy while meeting Santa Claus, and astounds the crowd by accurately guessing what everyone wants for Christmas. This combination seems, rather astonishingly, to work well. The Xavier Company's gleaming lights and spectacular floor displays impress everyone, all the reporters, and business is excellent, and the world is full to the brim with joy and goodwill.

And Charles, standing in his _other_ office, the one he pretends he doesn’t have, fifth floor of the elegant building that bears his family name, is realizing yet again that he’s managed to fall in love with a man who first of all seems to treat emotion as a precious commodity, hoarded away and doled out cautiously; and who, second, still doesn’t know Charles’s proper identity.

He looks at his hands again. Sits down, tiredly, in his chair. It’s been a terrible sequence of coincidences, really. He just hadn’t said, during that tumultuous first meeting; his office at the university is a temporary one, because he’s only visiting faculty, and they’ve not gotten around to putting his name on the door. Charles introduced his sister as Miss Darkholme because he always does, that’s her name, and she understandably prefers being known that way despite her adopted-Xavier status, and now he’s quite sure Erik’s assuming, and it’s been four days and he doesn’t know how to bring that subject up after so much time.

The person waiting in his office unfolds muscular arms and raises impressive eyebrows and inquires, “Somethin’ on your mind?” in a tone that makes it obvious that he’s well aware something is.

“It’s…don’t worry, Logan, please.” Charles sighs. Pushes all those thoughts to one side, for the time being, where they belong. “Was there something you needed to ask me?”

“Professor…” Logan sits down, then stands back up, then lights up a cigar. Charles scowls. This has no effect on either the cigar or his business manager. “Your meeting’s here. Sebastian Shaw.”

And just from the way he says the name, Charles can tell he’s not pleased. And that not pleased is doubtless an understatement.

Because he does trust Logan, who after all has been here running the company while Charles has been doing his best to pretend to be anyone other than an Xavier, he says, “I take it you don’t like him?”

“I don’t think you should sell the company at all. But you never listen to me.” Logan puts his feet up on the desk. Charles narrows his eyes. Logan smirks.

“I always listen to you. I may not agree. But, about Shaw…he made a generous offer. You know that. More than generous. And you know why I want nothing to do with this life.” Logan grunts, which could mean anything, or nothing. “I do value your judgment. Why don’t you like him?”

“He’s reptilian. Weaselly. Snake-like.”

“As much fun as this is, I’m going to need something more than your comprehensive animal-related vocabulary as support.”

“There’s something wrong about him,” Logan says. “He _smells_ wrong.”

“Thank you for that. Is there anything else?”

“Your pet architect is successfully terrifying the children into cherubic behavior and winning over their wealthy parents for pretty much the same reason. Have you told him who you are, yet?”

“Go away,” Charles says. “I have a meeting.”

“Touchy,” Logan observes, getting up. “You’re not sleeping with him, yet, then, either?”

“Please leave,” Charles says, desperately, and Logan grins, and strolls out the door, leaving behind an odor of cigar smoke and the beginnings of a hideous headache.

He’s not sleeping with Erik. He _would_ be sleeping with Erik, if Erik indicated any interest in that direction, in a heartbeat. Except that Erik, despite some very unsubtle stares when he thinks that Charles isn’t paying attention, never makes any sort of move. Looks startled, in fact, every time Charles touches him with affection. And Charles has been trying very hard not to push, not to ask for more, if Erik’s not ready. Because they’re happy. They are. He knows this in his bones.

This knowledge does not stop him from waking up frustrated and aching with desire every morning, however.

The headache lurks, ominous little spikes of sourness behind his eyes. And he has to meet with Sebastian Shaw, the man who’s offered to buy the company and take that weight off of Charles’s shoulders, the burden of obligations, of finances, of the family that was never family at all.

And Sebastian Shaw, evidently, smells wrong.

Charles sighs, pushes up his sleeves, and wonders whether it’s too early for a drink, and whether that might make his brain stop circling back to the thought of sleeping with Erik, and then mentally shakes himself and stands up and hold out a hand, as the person who _isn’t_ Erik walks through the door.

Sebastian Shaw very deliberately looks him up and down, and then smiles, and Charles understands the definition of the word _wrong_ for possibly the first time in his life. He flings up every mental wall he has, doesn’t allow himself to shudder at the touch of the man’s skin, the man’s mind, on his, and smiles, instead. Politely.

 

Erik wanders into the atrium, past his sculpture—which grins at him—brushing through the crowds of holiday shoppers with barely a glance. They aren’t important. Charles is important. He, Erik, gets to see Charles.

They have an afternoon tableau to put on, costumes and all, and it’ll be dreadful and there’ll be small children and reporters and it’ll probably do wonders for his own reputation and gain him some new prosperous clients and make Emma happy for once, but none of that matters, because Charles will smile at him again.

Erik enjoys seeing Charles smile at him.

He’s got a cup of tea in one hand, carefully protected from the wintery chill, and he’s looking around for blue eyes and improbable hair, when his ears pick up that familiar British-Empire accent, far colder than he’s ever imagined it could be. Charles is saying, decisively, “I suggest you _get out_ ,” and the tone means that it’s not a request.

What?

He looks upwards. Barely registers his hand tightening around the hot tea.

The heat’s negligible. The world’s colder than he’s ever thought possible.

Charles—his Charles, the person who’s beaten him at chess and touched his hand like a kiss—knows Sebastian Shaw. Or Klaus Schmidt. Or whatever alias the man’s using these days.

Charles looks angry. Charles walks back into a room, on an upper floor, as if he belongs there, and slams the door.

Sebastian Shaw regards the closed door thoughtfully, for a minute, and then grins, unpleasantly. Like a man contemplating a challenge.

He turns and gets into an elevator without ever having seen Erik standing below. Erik, at last, remembers how to breathe, and forces his feet into motion.

He takes the stairs. Somewhere along the way he drops the tea. He doesn’t notice when it happens.

He also doesn’t bother knocking on the door.

Charles, head buried in his arms on the desk, says, “Not now, Logan, please,” and he sounds weary enough, splendid accent fraying like torn thread, that Erik almost reconsiders. And then gets angry again, because what right does Charles have to be vulnerable when he’s just been fraternizing with the man who destroyed Erik’s family?

“Charles,” he says, instead, dangerously, “what the fuck?”

And Charles bolts upright, eyes huge. “What— _Erik?!”_

“What the hell are you doing here? With him? You—how do you know him?”

“I don’t—”

“What else have you been lying to me about?” The handles, on the desk drawers, creak and strain forward to hear. The lamps shiver, sending skittering light over Charles’s hair.

“I haven’t!” But that’s a lie, too; the blue eyes flick away as Charles says the words. _I haven’t—or I didn’t mean—I don’t know him, he was here to make me an offer for the company and I said no—_

“For the company—” _What’s your actual name, Charles!_ He knows he’s shouting in their heads. Charles winces. Erik hates himself for his fleeting sense of satisfaction at the sight.

“Charles Xavier.” A swallow, between words. “Charles Francis Xavier, if you want me to be precise. Erik, I’m sorry, I never meant to keep secrets from you—”

“Was _anything_ you told me true?”

 _All of it!_ Charles shouts back, this time, kindling anger like vivid flame. _You know that, you’ve heard my thoughts, you know I never lied to you about who I was because I’m NOT THIS PERSON—_

 _And you want me to believe you!_ “How do you know Sebastian Shaw?”

“I told you,” Charles says, voice shaking, “I only met him today, I—how could you think I’d know him, someone like that, who would—” And then he stops, and maybe he shivers a little, an unconscious defensive movement, pulling back into himself, and someplace very distant alarm bells are ringing in Erik’s head, but he ignores them, because the betrayal’s too new and incandescent.

“You’re making business deals,” he snaps, “with Sebastian Shaw. You own the damned building. You’ve been signing my memos. You’ve been letting me believe that we were—that we could—” And then he stops, because he’s literally feeling the floor beneath them shake with rage, and he doesn’t give a damn about himself but he can’t destroy one of his own innocent sculptures.

“I thought we were, as well,” Charles says. “We were—something. And I thought you might at least do me the courtesy of letting me explain.”

“You don’t need to explain anything.”

Charles’s face goes a bit more pale, at that. Might be anger. Or hurt. Erik can’t tell. “I didn’t tell you because I didn’t think—I was always planning to sell the company. I still am. I don’t want it. I don’t want anything from—never mind. I’m not selling anything to Sebastian Shaw, if you care to know. And that’s not only because he was casually thinking about tying me to my desk and repeatedly violating me, the entire time I was talking—though he was—”

Erik opens his mouth to respond, somewhere in the middle of that reply. As the last words belatedly arrive in his brain, he can’t say anything at all.

Charles, not noticing, keeps talking. “—it’s because I don’t like the way he thinks about his employees, or the working conditions in his factories, from the reports that Logan uncovered, and I may not want anything from my family but I’m not going to subject the people who rely on me to a man like that. So. Now you know. And now I am going to go downstairs and convince a roomful of reporters that they’ve seen the best damned Christmas tableau that’s never actually been performed, because I’m not in the mood for costumes but I won’t be responsible for letting them down, either.”

“Charles,” Erik says, or tries to say. He’s not sure the sound makes it out.

Charles walks around his desk. Opens the door. “I am sorry. I should have told you who I was. I only—I liked being myself, with you, for once. Except I suppose I wasn’t, really, was I. So I’m sorry for that too. You can let yourself out; you did let yourself in.”

“Wait,” Erik says, out loud this time, but too late; the door’s swung shut, and Charles is gone.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Erik finds Charles, and there's an enormous bathtub, comforting, mutual honesty, and possibly some sex.

_December 14 & 15, 1897_

Charles _is_ gone. That fact doesn’t become apparent until the following morning. By then, it’s terrifying.

Erik spends the evening and part of the night alternately trying to get drunk, realizing he doesn’t actually keep enough alcohol in his office to get drunk, contemplating a venture out to buy more, and then being afraid that Charles will decide to come find him and turn up at the exact second Erik’s out of sight.

He stays in his office. Charles might look for him there; it’s the only address Charles will know for him, since Erik’s never talked about where he lives.

Where he lives is a small but comfortable set of rooms in one of his own apartment buildings, not the newest but with one of the best views he’s ever arranged. Occasionally, over the past few days, he’s caught himself wondering whether Charles might appreciate those views as well.

Charles, he thinks, and opens the expensive whisky he keeps for the most affluent potential clients, and sits on his desk contemplating what a mess he’s just made of his life.

Charles has been hurt. Not physically, maybe, but assaulted all the same. And yes, maybe Charles does have some explaining to do, maybe they need to figure a few things out, that’s all true. But Charles has been hurt, _was_ hurt, while he, Erik, stood there and accused blue eyes of lying to him about everything, all along.

He knows _that’s_ not true. He knows the important parts, the cocoa and the chess matches and the quick sunbeam smile, are real. He’s always known.

Charles doesn’t appear at his office. Emma Frost does, and promptly rolls her eyes, says, “Call me when you’re sober,” and vanishes off to whatever ice cave she calls home. Erik hurls a handful of paper-spikes at the door. Mostly misses.

He had run after Charles, once he’d ceased to be frozen by sheer horror. Hadn’t done any good, though; Charles was either long out of the building or hiding his presence very effectively. And Charles’s business manager, all muscles and hair and glowering expressions, had threatened bodily harm if Erik refused to leave the premises.

He’d decided that he could probably take Logan in a fight, if events had gone, or might ever go, that direction. But Charles would likely mind. And Erik can’t do anything that might hurt Charles. More.

He’d tried Charles’s rented rooms, the ones he shares with his sister, at the university, earlier. No one’d been there, not since that morning, from the look of the place. Half-drunk and long-heatless tea, abandoned on a table. Scribbled notes for next term’s lectures. Books stacked untidily on a chair, all of them waiting, studying Erik expectantly: well, where is he? Why haven’t you brought him home?

“…I’m sorry,” Erik’d said, to the books, to the room, to Charles, and then had fled the weight of all those voiceless accusations.

He had run over to the laboratory, collared the first of Charles’s graduate students that he could find—Henry, the one with the glasses and overly large feet, who evidently hadn’t noticed the end of term around him—and stationed his baffled but obliging minion at Charles’s front door. If Charles comes home, the boy will send a message. And Erik will know.

At some point he falls asleep sitting on the floor in front of his desk, leaning against the wood. His dreams are frightening. Pieces of the past, of his parents, not enough food, not enough money, Schmidt—Shaw—not caring when they grew sick or weak. Himself trying desperately to build Shaw’s machinery in a day. Failing.

His mother’d told him that everything would be all right. She’d lied.

The dream, as dreams do, shifts and blurs and changes, in his head. And it’s not his mother he can’t save. It’s Charles, standing there while Shaw lifts a hand to touch him, to run fingers along his cheek, to do worse if Erik can’t complete the task at hand.

Dream-Charles shivers, the same way he had behind his desk, and closes those eyes, blue like bruises, like guilt. As if he doesn’t expect Erik to save him. As if he thinks that Erik will fail, or worse, won’t care enough to try.

 _No!_ Erik shouts, in the dream, and wakes himself up, trembling, on the floor.

The metal-embossed inkstand explodes, on his desk.

And someone’s knocking on his door.

Charles, he thinks, wordlessly, please, and flings it open.

Not Charles. Charles’s sister. Who’s glaring daggers at him even as he steps aside to let her in.

“Where’s Charles?”

“…what?”

“He didn’t come home last night. I knew he was upset, Logan said so, and Logan’s not usually wrong, and I know how much Charles likes to talk, so I figured he’d come here and talk to you. Where is he?”

“Wait—he’s not—he talked to Logan? When?”

“Before he left? I don’t know.” She regards the flood of ink, slowly dripping to the carpet, with suspicion. “What did you say to him?”

“…Logan?”

“Charles, you moron. Not that Logan likes you much, either.”

“I…might’ve said…I thought he was—he never told me who he was. And then I saw him meeting with someone I—I called him a—he said he’s never wanted anything from his family. Why not?”

“Why not,” Raven repeats, shaking her head. “Why didn’t you ask him?”

Of course. That would’ve been the obvious question. He’d been too angry for that. Too betrayed. He tries to offer words. No details, but something, at least. Gets cut off before he can begin.

“You think you’re the only person who knows anything about pain.” Raven’s glaring at him, eyes all yellow and fierce as a giant hunting cat’s, and that’s not a metaphor. “You don’t know anything about him. You don’t know anything about us. You’ve never even wondered about his scars, have you. You bastard.”

“His— _what_?”

“Oh, come on, you’re fucking him. Don’t look so shocked, it’s not as if I’ve never heard the word. And you are, aren’t you? You can’t say you haven’t noticed, then.”

“But I—we’re not—I haven’t—” Why is he explaining himself? Why, for that matter, _hasn’t_ he been sleeping with Charles? Put this way, it sounds ridiculous that he’s not, when he wants to, when he _wants_. When Charles has been holding his hand and smiling up at him and not pushing him, not ever, making Erik smile too and never requesting a thing in return.

Why does Charles have scars?

“You’re not?” Raven stares at him for a minute. “You’re serious. My god. I hope you know how little you deserve to have my brother in love with you, because he obviously does love you, and you obviously don’t give a damn.”

“I—he’s never said—”

And Raven stops, and exhales, slowly. “No. No, he wouldn’t. That would be what he’d do. Charles, you idiot.”

Charles, of course, isn’t there. No answer forthcoming. Only the dispassionate splash of the ink. Spilled. Unrecapturable.

“He…didn’t send you over here…”

And suddenly she’s angry again. “No wonder the two of you are perfect for each other, no wonder you’re fighting, neither one of you knows how to listen, when it’s important, and—if you’ve ever cared about him even a little bit, you’re going to listen to me now. Charles is _missing_. He never came home last night. He did not send a note, or a messenger, or turn up at half-past-three with two showgirls and a bottle of brandy, all right? _He. Did. Not. Come. Home_.”

And Erik can’t breathe.

The realization’s physical. A fist to the stomach. To the heart. He would collapse to the floor, folding up around this terrible hole in his chest, but he can’t move, because every piece of his body’s gone numb.

Charles. Charles alone in New York City, the heir to a glittering fortune in a place where nighttime murders don’t even make morning headlines, a telepath with recently-inflicted emotional wounds undermining all his walls, young and beautiful and audibly not American, out walking those dark and icy streets.

Oh, god. Charles.

The police are no help. They listen and nod gravely, and then make what-can-you-do? expressions over Raven’s head, smirking at Erik as if to say, we’re all men here, let’s just humor the hysterical lady. And then they politely suggest that Charles, given his relative youth, wealth, and past reputation, is simply out having a wonderfully good time.

Erik nearly puts his fist through the wall.

He also nearly strangles the fat man in the police chief’s uniform with the man’s own handcuffs, but considers the fact that Charles wouldn’t approve, and resists. He settles for fusing all the locks on the room’s private safe, instead. Petty vengeance, but it relieves some of his tension. For a second.

They leave the station. Raven looks white and grim. Erik can only imagine his own expression, as scattered passersby dodge out of his way.

Raven decides to go back home, to see if Charles has turned up, to wait. Erik hails them a cab, accompanies her, sees no sign of blue eyes in the night. It isn’t snowing, but there’s a heartless frost, hard and crystalline, biting through clothes and scarves and wool.

He waits, with Raven, for a while, and then he has to get up. Motion. Action. What he knows how to do.

It’s not dawn, not quite, but the greyness is growing lighter, coal giving way to pale ash. The charred remnants of fire, Erik thinks, the color that remains when there’s no flame left.

He walks, slowly, through the city streets. In the dim floating pre-morning gloom, the scene is otherworldly, that gap between the brilliant nighttime and the bustling day. The secret hours patrolled by cats and the dwellers in cracks.

The earliest ships’ve come in, down at the docks. Occasionally cries and calls ring out, briefly penetrating the hush. Milkmen make rounds. Bales of newsprint appear at street corners, awaiting paper-sellers. The world going on, as usual, ordinary, everyday.

He can navigate the city without signs or roadmaps. Each building, every monument to human engineering and determination and capitalism and creativity and greed, sings to him. They all chime in a slightly different key.

His own buildings always hum the most clearly. Sympathetic vibrations, perhaps. Echoes between creator and art.

He’s near one of his own right now. He knows which one it is without looking. The Xavier Building. Charles’s building.

He can’t look at it, not now, so he spins away and turns down a side street, not really paying attention, only walking, hopelessly, and when he looks up and sees _their_ coffeehouse opening its doors to pour out golden light, he wants to scream.

Standing there, after an uncounted while, he starts to notice something odd.

There’s a space, on the ground, outside the brightly-lit windows. A space where no one’s walking, despite the slowly-appearing early-morning holiday shoppers.

It’s a space about the size of a person, if that person were sitting down, curled up against the meager friendliness of the wall, and if that person weren’t very big to begin with, and trying very hard not to let anyone notice he’s taking up any room.

Erik takes two steps across the pavement, narrowly avoids tripping over an elderly woman and her poodle, avoids the matching scowls from both person and dog, and puts his hand out and touches the shoulder that he _knows_ is there. “Charles?”

The world flickers, just for a second: Charles’s surprise, and the confirmation Erik’s looking for.

“Charles,” he says, “I know you’re there. Please—” and then finds himself trapped by too many words, everything he wants to say next, _are you all right?_ and _please let me see you_ and _I’m so sorry, I need you, please come back and play chess with me_ and _if you’ll let me, and please let me, I would like to ask you about your scars_.

“How do you know—Ah. Raven.” Charles breathes out, resignedly, and the breath of air ripples outward and alters the world, Erik’s perceptions, emptiness filling with solid color. “She would tell you about that, now. At the worst possible time.”

“Have you been out here all night?” He kneels down, too, carefully, at Charles’s side. The sidewalk’s very cold, even through trouser legs. He doesn’t like to think about what that might mean. Charles hasn’t tried to stand up, or to move away, and that’s either a good sign or a bad one, and Erik doesn’t know.

“No. Only a few hours. How did you find me?”

“I...was just walking. Hoping. I saw this spot, and I—You told me once that you could hide in plain sight. If you wanted to.” He holds out a hand, palm up. For Charles to take, if he wants it. The air is very keen, brittle and sharp and clear as broken glass ornaments, against his skin.

“Apparently,” Charles says, looking at the offered hand, “I can’t hide from you,” and Erik can’t tell whether that’s disappointment or gratitude or neither, in that shielded tone.

Please, he thinks again, desperately, not certain what he’s asking for, or from whom, only knowing how very badly he needs Charles to reach out and take his hand.

Charles doesn’t look at him, but does lift his own ungloved fingers, slowly. Sets them in Erik’s. And Erik, who hasn’t wept in years, has to bite hard into his own lip to hold back the cascade.

“I don’t know why I didn’t tell you,” Charles murmurs, to their hands. “At first, I mean. I only…it never occurs to me, to introduce myself that way. Not really. And then you were so—I wanted to keep talking to you. To drink cocoa with you, and watch you smile. I could never find the right words. But I should’ve done.”

“Perhaps.” He squeezes the fingers, in his. Fights his own instincts, which are shouting at him to get them inside, away from hypothermia and frostbite and other dangers of the cold. If he pushes too hard, Charles might retreat again. “I like drinking cocoa with you, as well. And playing chess with you. And what you said, about smiling—You aren’t hiding from me. Right now. You did let me see you.”

“I owe you an explanation. Or an apology. Something…” Charles sighs. “I haven’t precisely apologized, yet, have I? I’m sorry.”

“Maybe you do, yes.” Truth; Charles deserves that. “But I owe that much to you, as well. So…if you feel like getting up…perhaps we can apologize to each other? Somewhere indoors?”

 _You don’t owe me anything_ , Charles says, wearily. _I lied to you_. “But you may be right about finding someplace indoors. I can’t actually feel my toes.”

“You did lie to me. Or at least you didn’t tell me everything. And I would like to know why. But it’s not your fault that I didn’t—that I said—what I said to you. I was wrong, too, and I am sorry.” _I do know who you are. You order tea in coffeehouses and get excited about new scientific textbooks. And you look far too pleased with yourself when you beat me at chess and then I want to kiss you. Please look at me._

There’s a second of hesitance, during which Erik’s heart trembles on the verge of cracking, before Charles looks up. And the imminent heartbreak gets swamped by shock.

_“What the hell happened?”_

“It’s not important!”

“Yes it is!” The bruise is large, and colorful. It sits like a mute and ominous spider over one graceful cheekbone, stretching vicious legs out in shadowy glee. _Charles, who—what—_

_I’m sorry—_

_What?!_ Out loud, desperately, he tries again. “Can I see? What happened?”

“I…yes, you can…if you want—”

“Of course I want!” He touches injured skin, as gently as he can. Tips Charles’s face toward the light. Forces back the unhelpful obscenities that jump to his lips. “Who—who did this to you?”

“It’s fine,” Charles says, softly.

“It isn’t!”

“It’s…” A small sigh. “You know I didn’t go home. I didn’t precisely sit here on the ground all night, either. I did walk around, for a while. And then I got cold. And then I went to a pub, because I thought I might like to be drunk, except I couldn’t really summon the enthusiasm, and then I told a very muscular ship’s captain that I didn’t mind him appreciating my backside—which he was, in his head, quite loudly—but that I wasn’t in the mood, at which point he proclaimed to the entire room that he was not any sort of fairy-boy, and then punched me in the face. I—”

“ _Charles_ —”

“It really is all right.” Charles looks away. “I knew he would, you see.”

Erik sits on his heels for a second, shocked to the core. Earthquakes. Tremors. The presaging of an apocalypse, as the world spins uncaringly on.

No. Not while he can still do something, anything, to hold back the cataclysm.

He’s not sure what to say, so he settles for actions. He’s always been better at those.

He picks up Charles’s cold hand again. Folds his own fingers around those shorter freckled ones, reassurance, perhaps, tangible sensation, physical and inarguably here. Then bends his head and touches his lips to fingertips, lightly, but with conviction: I want you. I will always want you. Here, in the dark light of your confessions, on the stained sidewalks in the crackling cold, or inside in the glow of lamplight and tea, or anywhere, wherever you want me to be.

And then he waits.

 _Erik_ , Charles says, into the quiet. When he looks, blue eyes are looking up, into his.

_I think…I want you to be wherever I am._

_Then I will be._ Simple as a heartbeat. As their heartbeats, in time. “Can you stand up?”              

 _So that we can go find that someplace indoors? With tea?_ “I think so, yes.” Charles starts to get up. Winces. Erik realizes abruptly that the dark pattern on the sleeve of that shirt, the one he’d taken for dirt or dampness, is neither of those.

Much redder. Horrifying.

“You’re bleeding! Come here, please—”

“It’s not…it isn’t as bad as it looks. I promise.” But Charles leans into his body despite the words. Erik clings to him with one arm, trying futilely to become some sort of shelter against the cold, and at the same time peels away soaked fabric, as gently as he can. Charles hisses in pain.

“Sorry—I’m sorry, Charles, I know it hurts—what’s this from?” It’s not as bad as he’d first thought, only a jagged cut across thin skin, nothing vital. But his heart doesn’t believe that, yet.

“It was only me being clumsy. After he—I tripped over a table. I think that’s from a whisky glass. I—”

“We need to clean this. And get you out of the cold. Come on.”

“Where are we going?”

“Home. I mean my home. I mean—you’re looking at me like—do you need to sit down? Here—”

“No, I’m fine, I’m only—you want to take me home with you? To your home?” _You’d…share that with me?_

“Of course,” Erik tells him, _I trust you_ , and then, while Charles is still patently processing the honesty in that statement, scoops him up off his feet, and proceeds, despite vociferous protests about heaviness and unnecessary coddling, to carry him the entire way.

 

Inside the fortress of the building, enclosed by worried walls and curious lampgleam, he deposits Charles on the bed. He’d thought about the low sofa, in the open sitting room, but the bedroom will have the best light, at this time of morning. And he needs to be able to see. To fix this. To make this right.

Charles hasn’t said anything for some time. This fact is frightening.

“Charles,” he says, voice a bit too loud, “are you awake?”

“Oh…yes, sorry. Only thinking. This is…you designed this place, didn’t you? For yourself?”

Erik glances around, involuntarily. Of course he had; but he’s a bit surprised that Charles can tell. Or maybe not. Maybe he isn’t surprised at all, that Charles knows him so profoundly.

The quiet walls, the practical furnishings, the open space, all concur. Even his small metal sculptures, the ones that have their own niches in various walls, purr encouragingly. They all like having Charles here.

“Yes. Can I see your—oh, no, you’re shivering, we should—” The other room has a bathtub. A generously-sized tub even for Erik, which means that Charles can probably swim in it like a lake, but right now that’s a good thing: Charles needs all the warmth in the world.

He can turn the water on with a thought, and does, and as steam begins wafting invitingly skyward, reaches out, and then stops himself, looking at that ruined shirt, not yet unfastening any protective buttons. Hears Charles say, in memory, _he was thinking about tying me to my desk and repeatedly violating me, the entire time I was talking..._

“It’s all right.” Charles reaches over, and takes his hand. _He didn’t. It didn’t happen. Or it mostly didn’t happen. But you’re you. You’re not him._

A few of the metal sculptures shiver, on the walls. But he manages to nod, faced with all that steadiness, and then, cautiously, starts undoing buttons. Charles tries to help, one-handed.

“Stop that. You’re injured.”

“Not that badly.”

“ _Please_ stop.”

Miraculously, Charles does; only looks at him, quiet, for a rare moment, eyes the infinite dark color of the sky after sundown.

When Erik’s fingers gingerly slip beneath cloth and encounter skin, Charles breathes in. And then half-smiles, wondrous and fleeting as a shooting star. “I always imagined this moment as a bit more…well, more champagne and excitement and less freezing to death, honestly.” _Thank you, Erik_.

“You are not freezing to death.” Won’t happen. Not allowed to happen. “Can I…remove this? Are you…” _Do you want me to touch you?_

“The answer to that is most certainly yes.” _And thank you again. For that. The certainty_.                                                                                   

Charles does flinch, though, not visibly, as Erik moves to peel fabric away. He stops again. _Are you sure?_

“I thought I just said so.” _It’s only…Raven did tell you, did she not? About the…the scars. They’re not that bad, really, and I’m not—but I did think perhaps I should warn you—_ And then that mental flurry stops abruptly, as Erik decides that no words are going to be sufficient and simply goes back to doing what he’s been doing, which is undressing golden freckles and inadvertently holding his breath.

They aren’t technically that bad, no. Not life-threatening or large. Small circles that Erik’s brain can only categorize as _like_ cigar burns—the alternative’s unthinkable—along elegant arms, over that chest. One tangled silvery line like spider’s-webs caught along an elbow; never visible, because Charles doesn’t walk around in short sleeves.

_Those…what you’re thinking they resemble. They, ah…well. Are._

Erik says something very blasphemous, in German.

 _Yes, I’d probably have to agree. My stepfather was not a particularly kind man_. “He did regret the elbow, though. He’d not meant to break bones. And, you know, he didn’t touch me for quite some time, after that; worth it, really. So it’s sort of a badge of survival.” Charles looks at him, shakes that head, puts a hand on Erik’s arm. _It’s all right. I’m all right. Now. I promise you that_.

And the emotion, accompanying the touch, is genuine, if tinged with watercolor waves of ruefulness: Charles does mean the words, when he says them. It’s not all right, of course—and clearly they need to have a talk about what that English phrase means—but Charles is, miraculously, truthfully, still here. Not unscathed, but accepting the damage. Moving beyond it.

It’s probably healthier than Erik’s reaction, which currently involves the desire for a time machine and several hours alone with some scrap metal and that dark-figured stepfather.

And then Charles shivers _again_ , and Erik swears out loud and yanks off every other shred of his clothing and sweeps him back into apprehensive arms.

“I can walk, you know.”

“You shouldn’t have to.” He eases Charles down into the bathtub. The water flows up and laps at dark hair like a happy cat, and cradles all the freckles in heat and security.

Erik tries very hard not to think about those freckles, and the water touching them. That would mean he’s thinking about Charles being naked. And those are not thoughts he should be having, in these intimate and problematic circumstances.

“Can I see your arm?”

“Oh…here, yes. Sorry. I’m enjoying your bathtub. I can’t even reach the other end, this is stupendous…”

“You said…champagne and excitement, earlier. When you imagined this moment. You imagined this moment?” If he talks, if he can keep Charles talking, then neither of them will have to think about the bloody cut that slices across the muscle. His hands move on autopilot. Bandages. Alcohol. Needle. Thread.

Also, though, underneath everything, that absurdly shining spark of glee wants to know: Charles thinks about him, has thought about them, here together.

“I did, yes. I do. Though I might’ve imagined in more detail if I’d known you had a private lake in here…”

“Charles,” Erik says, and Charles tips his head back and smiles, and the kiss warms all the abysses of the world.

After a while, he finishes the row of stitches, small and neat and precise, not too many after all, and sets everything down, thread and bandages and antiseptic, and then puts a hand on the side of the tub for no reason at all. Charles takes it. And they sit quietly, holding hands, in the ripples of water and steam.

Eventually Charles sighs and yawns and murmurs a half-formed thought about fingers and prunes, and Erik nods, grabs blankets, curses mentally because he hasn’t got _enough_ blankets, and whisks Charles off to the bed. He doesn’t think to ask; Charles doesn’t protest. Only settles down amid squashable pillows, and stretches his arm, flexes muscles, testing. “Thank you. You’re quite good at that.”

“I…had to learn. Are you still cold?” He’ll find more blankets somewhere, if the answer’s yes. Might have to sacrifice a shirt or two. They won’t be upset.

“No. Erik…” _You said—about Shaw—you said that he ruined your family. Your life. I would never have spoken to him if I’d known, believe me._

_I do._

_Do you want to tell me?_

And Erik looks at him, really looks at him, perched there on Erik’s bed, bundled up and bruised and beautiful. Asking the question with compassion in those eyes.

 _Charles_ , he says, and thinks briefly about silvery lines over morning-washed skin. That’s a question, as well.

Charles smiles, just a little. _I’ll tell you mine if you’ll tell me yours_.

Erik sits down beside him, slowly. Not out of hesitation. Only a kind of delicious disbelief, the unhurried sensation of time in a dream, unfolding petal by petal, drawn-out and almost unbelievably splendid.

He puts a hand out, and finds entrancing skin, water-warmed and welcoming his touch, as Charles magically wriggles around and makes space for both of them in the blanket-burrow. Explorations. Discoveries. Priceless treasure, beyond compare.

“Not a dream,” Charles says, out loud but very softly, not breaking the spell.

So he tells Charles everything.

Everything means—everything. His childhood. How proud his parents’d been of his unusual abilities, his intuitive understanding of engineering principles. The great Industrial Revolution, the factory, moving into their small town. The choice: work for Schmidt, or starve. No choice at all, not in the end.

His parents growing ill. Himself taking his father’s place, one morning, at the factory.

Charles makes a small sound, at that, as if he wants to say something, but when Erik glances over, he shakes his head. Puts his other hand atop Erik’s restless fingers, on his arm. And Erik, from no easily explicable cause, feels more calm.

He shows Charles the accident at the factory, himself intervening, abilities strained to the utmost. Stopping spinning wheels, saving the life of one of the foremen, a man who’d offered his own bread for Erik to take home, the day before. Shows Charles the look on Schmidt’s face, at the sight.

Charles squeezes his hand.

“I built everything for him,” Erik says. _As quickly as I could, every day, until I couldn’t stand, until I couldn’t eat—it was never enough. And when my mother died, he told me that if I’d been a better son, done what he asked, she might’ve lived._

Charles breathes in, plainly shocked, but doesn’t interrupt, or let go. Lets him keep talking, now that’s he’s started, secrets pouring out into the world.

_I left—I walked out, in the night, and kept going, until I got on a steamer bound for America. I thought I could—here, in New York, I could start over. And if I could make enough money, make the right contacts…I always thought I’d find Schmidt—Shaw—again, one day. And then he was there. In your office._

_Erik, I’m so sorry._

_It’s not your fault, Charles._

_Still. I never would’ve even entertained his offer. And I might’ve done worse than throw him out of the office._ And the image that accompanies that statement is of Charles smacking the man over the head with the nearest book and dropping him at Erik’s feet, gift-wrapped, and it’s amusing, but also tinged with honest regret: Charles means it all.

“You didn’t know,” Erik says, aloud, “because I didn’t tell you. You had no reason to know.” _And you were—he hurt you, anyway, you weren’t—I should have told you. Warned you about him._

“You didn’t know I’d be meeting with him, either.” But Charles tightens his grip on Erik’s hand, remembering. _Perhaps we’re just not very good at talking to each other._

“Perhaps we can…try again?” _ARE you all right?_

 _I’m…telepaths become used to hearing everyone’s thoughts, you see, very early on. Fantasies. Desires. Most people would never act on them. And he didn’t know I could hear. But it was…so very personal. And he took such pleasure in the imagining. So that was a bit…unnerving_.  “And, yes. Yes, I think we can.” Charles glances at their joined hands. Then up, meeting Erik’s eyes. “I’m all right.”

“Scars,” Erik says, softly. Old and new. _You said you’d tell me yours_.

“I did…” Charles takes a deep breath. Lets him see.

After a while, Erik has to pull his pet coins from his pocket and fling them into motion, in the air. If he doesn’t, if he doesn’t let them spin furiously in place, all the rage will erupt some other way, and Charles doesn’t need that.

No wonder Charles wants nothing to do with his family. Erik’s coins ring brightly with the need to _do_ something, to exhume that now-deceased stepfather and kill him again, perhaps, for ever daring to lay a hand—and worse—on that glorious skin. To go back in time, impossibly, and hold younger Charles against the blood-black smear of pain that’s the memory of his real father’s death.

Self-inflicted. No note, no explanation, simple devastation, while his young son sat up in bed and screamed and felt it all. Blasphemous, Erik thinks, and he’s not religious, not any longer, but it’s the only word that fits. The only word for all the wounds, all the scars.

 _I left for Oxford as soon as I could_ , Charles tells him. _The day I came of age and could walk away. I never thought I’d come back._

 _Why—why did you?_ Under the words, inside them, voiceless selfish gladness that Charles _did_ , that they were allowed to meet, that they’ve known each other at all.

 _Yes_ , Charles says, _I’m_ _rather happy about that, as well_. “To be perfectly truthful…and we are being truthful, now, aren’t we…my mother died. She left everything to me. It was…something of a surprise.”

 _I'm sorry_ , Erik says, because that's what people say, in those moments. Charles looks at him, and, after a second, smiles. _It's long over. Anyway, that's why I'm here. Though...I'm here, specifically, at this moment, because of you._

_...what?_

_Because you found me._

_Because you let me find you._ "I...am glad. That you are here." Inadequate. True.

"So am I." _Erik...I am also half-naked, in your bed._

“Yes…so you are.” The opalescent winter light splashes through the windows, and pools around them, anticipating. _Do you want—would you like to be…_

 _More naked in your bed? I think I would enjoy that, yes._ “As long as you’re naked, too.”

Erik loses every stitch of clothing as fast as humanly possible. Dives back onto the bed. Looks at Charles, and then stops. “Are you—I mean, if you’re not—"

If Charles is still wounded. If Charles is off-balance from the violations, the images, that must still be swirling in the back of his head. If Charles is afraid to be touched. If.

“I told you that I was all right. I meant it.” _Would it help if I kissed you?_

“If you—” Charles tastes like sunlight in winter and unexpected spice, hot cocoa spiked with exotic rum, complex and delicious. Erik breathes in, tries to run his tongue over every inch of welcoming skin, wants to drink it all in and let those sensations overwhelm his world.

Charles laughs, in their heads, not out of amusement, or only out of a kind of marvelling amusement that’s entwined with limitless elation, celebratory as the holiday lights. And parts his lips a bit more. Trails fingertips over Erik’s arms. Along his back.

_Sufficiently convinced? Or perhaps I ought to kiss you more?_

_Please never stop,_ Erik asks him, meaning the words, and Charles laughs again, and then gets that look in blue eyes, the one that Erik knows from all those chess matches, mischievous and delighted. He starts to inquire, and abruptly finds himself being pounced on, tossed down into the bed, and pinned between an excited mattress and a very enthusiastic body.

Bemused, he takes a second to process this turn of events. Charles takes advantage of that second to shift positions. And then puts those lips somewhere…else.

“Oh _god_ —”

Charles doesn’t even pause to answer out loud. _You did say you liked me kissing you_.

“I—you—oh god do that again with your tongue—” And he starts losing English, after that, swearing in German, or just babbling incoherent phrases, which makes Charles grin and then do that specific thing a few more times. Erik’s hands are in his hair, holding him in place, they’ve ended up there at some point, and he would worry about being too rough but he gets the impression that Charles doesn’t mind, that he rather likes the weight, the possessiveness, the desire.

He thrusts upwards, inadvertently, and Charles moves with him in response, one hand sliding up to wrap around the base of his cock, and there’s pleasure _everywhere_ , billowing around them, inside and out, himself and Charles and the physical and mental all colliding ecstatically, white-hot and electric with need, and one or both of them thinks an exultant _Yes!!_ and then he stops thinking, for a while.

Charles swallows, breathes, swallows again, and then kisses the tip of Erik’s cock, lightly, taking him back in, tasting him in the aftermath, not quite looking up.

Erik, lying there panting and wondering when the world’s going to stop sparkling, manages, _Charles, come here, please…_

Charles pulls that warm mouth away from Erik’s softening arousal, and slides up to lie next to him, in the bed, and curls naturally into the space that’s meant for him along Erik’s side, but still doesn’t meet Erik’s eyes.

 _Charles_ , Erik says again, and tangles a hand in his hair, and touches his face, the cheek that isn’t wounded and painful.

The ocean-water eyes do lift, at that. And maybe there’s a hint of melancholy in the mental touch of lips to his, but it’s a sweet kind of ache, the hush after the tempest, the quivering lull of the surfeit of sensation, exposed and raw and pure.

Erik kisses him as gently as possible, an unspoken question; Charles says _I don’t know!_ and laughs, unevenly, in place of the tears.

 _Your hair tastes like coconut_ , Erik says, because it’s true. And this earns another laugh, brighter now, without any real embarrassment. _The company imports quite a lot of luxury soap! And I happen to like luxury soap! And coconut!_

_I didn’t say I minded._

“No, you didn’t…” Charles smiles up at him. Erik feels, briefly, invincible _. I believe I could also like your bed. It’s a friendly bed. Pleased to see me._

“ _I’m_ pleased to see you.” _Can I…see more of you?_

“I’m already naked, you realize.”

“Yes, but…” He runs a hand over Charles’s hip, following freckles. _I prefer exploring by touch. Like this. Here. If you would like…_

“I would definitely like.” Charles rolls over onto his back. Pulls Erik down on top of him. “Go on. Explore. Explore _me_.”

Which is an irresistible invitation. So Erik does.

He’s never had that much experience in this area, and he’s not quite sure of the mechanics involved in what Charles has just done for him, but Charles makes very encouraging little noises when Erik kisses his stomach, when long fingers stroke curiously across that hardness, silk and iron, swelling further when he wraps his hand around the shaft.

Charles groans, softly, at that last one. “Good?” Erik inquires, as if he can’t tell, and Charles says “Jesus Christ Erik _please_ ” and Erik raises both eyebrows at him. “Such language, from you. Not exactly fit for polite company.”

“Fuck polite company,” Charles says, “will you please move your hand like that again _now?”_

Erik has to bite the inside of his cheek to keep from laughing. Assumes an appropriately stern expression. “Don’t be impatient. I get to explore you, remember? My turn.”

To which Charles mutters something very succinct and quite profane, but which isn’t exactly a protest, and Erik considers for only a second and then says, “Behave.”

And Charles goes very wide-eyed and quiet, gazing up at him, and the ripples of desire say everything, bursting through their veins.

“Oh,” Erik says, “yes, then, all right,” because even if he’s never really done this before that somehow doesn’t matter, because Charles is looking at him with _that_ expression, astonishment and want and absolute trust, because he can do this, because _yes_.

There’s wetness at his fingertips. Leaking from Charles’s cock, so hard and beautifully needy, stirring at his touch. He uses it. Strokes, up and down. Finds a rhythm.

Charles gasps, in their heads and out loud. Starts talking again, voicelessly, words and phrases falling over each other: _Erik yes please need yes more please—_

_Are you asking me?_

_Yes—_

_Ask me again._

_Oh, fuck,_ Charles says, plus a few more colorful words, but when the shock of denial flashes through them both it’s a delicious impact. _Erik, please, please, I need to, I need you, please do that again right there your hand right THERE—please tell me I can, I have to—_

_You can. For me._

And Charles gasps again, and every muscle goes rigid, orgasm spilling out over Erik’s hand, that pale stomach, the faded scars. In their heads, euphoria like honeyed wine and the brilliance of fireworks. Delirious bliss.

The sensation doesn’t vanish, in the aftermath. It transmutes, instead, into a quieter glow, banked embers and contentment at dusk. Peace.

Charles doesn’t say anything for a while, only lying folded into the circle of Erik’s arms. Their heartbeats keep time, in the background.

 _Would you_ , Erik says, into the tumble of coconut hair on his shoulder, _like to stay here? Tonight?_

This earns a smile, against his skin. _It’s technically morning, now…but yes. I would._

_Good._

_Yes._

“Charles…” _That was…good…for you, wasn’t it?_ He knows the answer, or he thinks he does. He still needs to hear the words.

“That was incredible, for me.” _What about you? I know you’ve not—I mean, not very much—I mean—sorry!_

“You apologize too much,” Erik says, and kisses the top of his head. “Don’t.” _Incredible for me, as well. A bit unexpected, perhaps. But…in a good way._

 _I’ve never actually done that before,_ Charles admits, after a comfortable interlude. _I mean the last part. The part when you—me asking you for—honestly incredible, you know. I told you once that you were brilliant. You are._

_We are. Together._

_Yes_. Drowsy agreement. Affirmation. Sunrise.

There’s still a bruise on Charles’s face, a bandage on that arm, and when he sighs and settles more securely into Erik’s hold, Erik feels his heart break, just a little, not enough to contain all the emotions he’s feeling in this second, the worry and protectiveness and wonder and exhaustion and joy.

At the edge of sleep, Charles murmurs _yes_ , one more time. To everything.

And they fall asleep that way, tangled up together in Erik’s friendly bed, as the morning sun comes up to pour golden light over the world.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which lazy mornings happen, and someone makes Charles an offer, and Erik objects.

_December 18, 1897_

“Erik,” Charles says.

Erik doesn’t even open an eye, only wraps one long arm more snugly around his waist. Charles sighs, and tips his head back, and kisses the first spot he can reach, which happens to be the soft skin just under Erik’s sharply-defined jawline, warm and tasting like heat and slightly prickly from morning stubble. “I really do need to get up.”

“No, you don’t. You need to stay here. With me.”

“Well, yes. I need that as well. But I have to go in to the office—” He realizes the poor choice of words even as he’s talking, as that arm tenses fractionally around his body.

Of course his office is a sore spot. A raw place, scraped sensitive and not yet healed over, between them. It will heal, he believes, given time. But not now. Not yet.

“I mean on campus. The university. My university office. I—”

“The university’s on holiday, Charles.” But Erik rolls over and puts the other arm around him, too: an apology of his own, a wordless promise.

“Yes, I know.” He settles down atop Erik’s chest. It’s warm there.

And then he gets a briefly amused mental flicker of response—Charles-as-kitten, curled up and fluffy and craving heat—and _then_ attempts to thump Erik’s closest shoulder with his fist. “I am not.”

“Yes, you are. I like it. Why do you need to go to your university, then?”

“Oh…they sent a message over yesterday…are you petting my hair? All right, then…delivery problems, in the laboratory. Unlabeled specimens. Unsorted slides, for the microscopes…that’s very distracting.” _I like your hand right there._

 _I know you do_. “Why do you have to go? I thought you had graduate students.”

“Well, yes, but it’s their holiday, too _.” It shouldn’t take very long. I’ll come back and meet you for dinner, after._

“I could come with you.” This time Erik’s thinking that Charles is far too nice a person, and the thought’s tinged with bafflement and pity and protectiveness and awe.

“I thought you had work to do. You were even dreaming about it. That new skyscraper, downtown…”

“You heard that? It’s not a confirmed project. Or not yet. If I did get to design it, though…” The thoughts spiral away into steel and iron, girders and support, mathemathics like a composer’s symphony, playing out on metal strands. Charles listens, quietly, and doesn’t try to hide the upswell of affection, pure and true; Erik’s so breathtaking, like this, in his element, pun intended and turning into metaphor, Erik and the elements at play.

 _Oh, really…_ Powerful fingers trace their way up Charles’s back. Over old scars, and newly-mapped constellations of sunburst freckles, and sleep-soft skin. “Suspension bridges, I think.”

“…what?”

“You.” Erik touches his face, this time, fingers brushing the delicate skin over a cheekbone, below one eye. “If I were designing you. Something elegant, and flexible, but strong…”

“Flexible?”

“Not like that…or, yes, like that, all right…no, I mean it. Graceful, but supporting all the weight anyone can throw at it…with curves, I think…Charles, do we have any…”

And Charles laughs, and gets up to find paper and a pen, and lets Erik sketch new creations into existence over his back, as he lies there decadently naked in the shimmering morning air. Erik’s pen occasionally wanders past the boundaries of the paper, brushing ink onto pale skin with his absorption; he apologizes the first time, and then the second, and then finally hears what Charles is very loudly thinking, and smiles with all those teeth and signs his name, not at the bottom of the sketch, but over a curving span of freckles, a hipbone, ticklish places.

Charles yelps in an undignified fashion and Erik smiles again, so Charles has to kiss him, and neither of them ends up leaving the bed at that moment, in the end.

After, exhausted, languorous, replete, he finds Erik’s paper again, on the floor. “Are those chess pieces? On this bit?”

“Hmm?...Oh. Yes. They don’t actually serve any purpose. Only decorative. I thought you’d like them.” There’s ink on Erik’s thumb, and, rather improbably, on his nose. He looks somewhat less than frightening, right now; the Erik that Charles wants to see, always, thoroughly pleasured and happy and blushing a little, caught between embarrassment and pride in his designs.

“I do like them. They’re smiling at me. Can I keep this?”

“If you want it…”

“I do.” Erik does need the affirmation, sometimes, he’s realizing. Earlier he’d’ve found that strange, from someone so fiercely independent and driven. He likes to believe that he knows Erik a bit better than that, now. “I do still need to go to campus…will you be here when I get back?”

“Of course.” Erik sits up to watch, as Charles pulls on clothing. “I can make food for us. If you want to eat here. It might rain.”

Charles, half-dressed, walks back over to the bed, puts both hands on Erik’s face, draws him closer, and kisses him, for that. _Yes_.

He finds his own greatcoat, for once—probably because Erik’s started pointedly hanging it by the door—and heads out the door, with a fair amount of reluctance in every step. Almost turns around, when Erik starts idly projecting thoughts about his own continuing nakedness, but he’s already dressed and he’s committed now, so he sends back some unbelievably filthy images of his own, plans for later and himself on his knees and wet lips and ideas about just what Erik might be able to do with the chain off his pocket watch, and then says, cheerfully, _later!_ and listens to Erik’s mental splutter.

He privately vows that this is going to be the fastest laboratory organization ever attempted. And walks a bit more rapidly through the gleaming winterscape day.

The campus is mostly deserted, for the holidays. It’s peaceful, a kind of anticipatory calm: the students will be coming back, soon enough. The buildings wait, content.

Charles lets himself into the laboratory—a brand-new workspace, absolutely lovely, and he takes a moment to appreciate it, just looking around—and then spots the waiting boxes, unlabeled and towering ominously at him, and sighs, and settles down.

After a while he gives up and sits on the floor. The surrounding space is necessary.

He doesn’t actually mind the work. Labeling specimens is rather mindless, granted, but he likes knowing all the little details of his lab, and this way he’ll have everything organized and tagged the way he wants it to be. Easy, for later. Like setting up a home.

His hands get into a rhythm, while his thoughts wander off on their own. Home. Here, at Columbia. Of course he’s here temporarily, a visiting professorship, he’s been planning to use this year to rid himself of the company and the inheritance and run back to Oxford and his familiar pub and his colleagues and the gently winding medieval streets.

Erik’s here. Erik, and lit-up modern skyscrapers, possibilities and excitement and something that feels a lot like love. Erik, and Charles’s new graduate students, the ones who’ve become friends already, who he’d love to work alongside. This laboratory. Erik’s rooms and the bed they wake up in, shared, together.

Charles has never been the strongest supporter of Oscar Wilde and the aesthetic movement—he appreciates the wit, but not the cynicism—but they’ve been instrumental in the marriage reform movement, gathering support for passage of those bills first in England, and, slowly and begrudgingly, in the States as well. It’s still only barely legal for two men to form a union, and they’ll be looked at askance, with some suspicion.

But it’s not unheard of. It’s not unaccepted. And the suspicion will ease, with time.

He wonders whether Erik’s ever contemplated being married. He wonders whether Erik would ever contemplate being married to him.

He imagines being married to Erik. It’s surprisingly easy to picture.

And then he laughs at himself, and thinks about castles and air and building on clouds, and goes back to sorting slides, one by one.

A while later, out of nowhere, a voice says, in his head, _Not castles, Charles, suspension bridges!!_ and the voice sounds a lot like Erik’s, and he finds himself helplessly smiling at a set of single-celled organisms.

Later, he’s nearly done, packing away the last of the slides, now neatly labeled in his most legible handwriting, and thinking about Erik’s cooking. Erik has culinary skills, honed by years of poverty and, later, travel, that leave Charles, who burns water on a regular basis, in awe. Erik always blushes, when complimented, and tries to brush the day’s deliciousness off as nothing special; Charles thinks about Erik preparing dinner for them, those long-fingered hands adding ingredients, as the rooms fill up with rich flavors and coziness, the occasional spoon stirring by itself while happy eyes pause to look something up, and the thought feels like where he always wants to be.

He wonders whether he ought to tell Erik that. He thinks that maybe Erik should know.

He thinks that maybe, just maybe, today, this afternoon, he could walk through the door and put his arms around that slim waist and say the words “I love you” out loud.

Erik’s not said them yet. But his thoughts swirl with the emotion, sweeping and sparkling and overwhelmed with joy, stronger each time Charles touches him or kisses him or takes his hand, small gestures of affection that earn wordless surges of _yes_ and _please_ and _forever_.

Erik’s not said them yet, but that doesn’t mean the words aren’t true. It only means that Erik’s hesitating, perhaps hoping that Charles will say them first, will be the one to take that step.

It might mean something else. It might mean that Erik’s choosing not to say them. That Charles can’t be enough for Erik to love.

No, Charles thinks. No. I’d know if that were true. And Erik’s making dinner. For us both.

Lost in thought, stomach rumbling, he doesn’t hear the first knock at the door. When it comes a second time, it sounds a bit more irritated; and Charles, feeling guilty, shouts, “Yes, Henry, please come in!” without checking, because who else would be here at this hour on holiday?

He doesn’t bother getting up off the floor for the same reason, and so when a very correctly-dressed young woman opens the door and steps inside and says, “Oh…excuse me, we were looking for Professor Xavier, can you tell us where…” he then has to fling himself to his feet, apologizing profusely.

“I’m so sorry, can I help you, I thought you were one of my graduate students, I’m always having to send him home, honestly, he’s brilliant but a bit inclined to live in the lab, not that that’s a bad thing, oh I’m sorry again, what did you need?”

“Ah,” the woman says, and her colleague looks rather impressively disapproving, “are you a student of his?”

Charles flushes all over despite trying not to, all at once acutely aware of his own appearance: shoved-up sleeves, discarded waistcoat, recalcitrant hair, and what he suspects is packing dust from the boxes on his nose. And then he resolutely forgets about it all, and puts on his best lecturing-to-undergraduates expression, though he suspects it’s too late to do any good. “Er, no. I’m the person you’re looking for, I’m afraid. What can I do for you?”

“You are…Professor Charles Xavier?” _Seriously?_ says her tone, and her thoughts, though beneath that there’s a flicker of _adorable/ no/ too soon/ too young anyway/ kind of like an eager kitten_.

Charles almost asks _why is it always kittens?_ aloud, but manages to turn the question into, “Yes?” just in time.

“All right, then.” She looks him up and down. The expression gives nothing away; she’s likely quite good at what she does. She’s never been faced with a telepath before, though.

“You needn’t be nervous,” Charles says, a statement which, he realizes the instant the words come out of his mouth, produces the opposite effect. Damn.

“I’m sorry. Again. Look, you truly don’t need to be nervous, I’m not reading your mind, and that’s a bit difficult in any case, focusing on one particular mind among all the rest, especially when I don’t know you—” This is slightly exaggerated, he has enough control to discover her secrets if he really concentrates, but there’s no need; she’s already thinking about telling him why they’ve come. Easier just to let her speak. “—and that’d be terribly rude of me, besides. We’ve not even met. Or had coffee. Or anything at all.”

“Flirting with me will get you nowhere, Professor. We have some questions for you, and a request.”

“I wasn’t—” Charles tries, futilely, then gives up. He’d only meant to make her smile. “What’s this about? And, sorry, who are you again?”

Her thoughts say _as if you don’t know_ , but, to her credit, she holds out a hand. “Moira MacTaggart. And this is my colleague, Agent Platt—” Platt only grunts. Well, Charles can’t exactly fault the man for being unimpressed.

“—we work for the United States government, and we’d like to ask you a few questions.”

“Er…am I being deported? Because I’m actually an American citizen, you know, even if I don’t sound like—”

“No—”

“Then is it about the research? Because I’ve not even started teaching yet, but I suppose I can see how someone might object to principles of Darwinism being—”

“No! Professor, you know a man named Sebastian Shaw, correct?”

“Oh,” Charles says, and thinks, _Erik_ , and then remembers to be polite. “Would you…like to sit down? And, no, I think _know_ is rather a strong term, in this instance. But we have, ah, become recently acquainted, yes.”

The agents glance at each other; Charles says, “My office, perhaps? Upstairs?” and leads the way.

The room is chilly, despite the book-lined walls and expansive desk. No heat being wasted here. Outside, the rain begins to fall, soft and silvery, whispering over tired stone.

Miss MacTaggart does most of the talking. She asks him how much he knows about the man who’s offered to buy his father’s lucrative company. She nods when Charles admits to disliking Shaw on sight, and Agent Platt grunts again. This seems to be his complete range of communication; Charles wonders briefly whether it’s an innate or learned behavior, and how advantageous that could conceivably be for a government operative, then yanks his mind back to the discussion at hand.

“Sebastian Shaw,” Miss MacTaggart says, “is a criminal, Professor. He’s involved in weapons manufacturing. Arms dealing. Selling guns to international crime syndicates. And worse.”

“Sorry, there’s worse?”

Agent Platt speaks up enough to say, “Show him the files,” and Charles nearly says _oh you can talk how delightful_ but judges that now is not the time for humor, and puts on an appropriately interested expression, instead.

He’s handed papers. Documentation. Photographic evidence. The conditions in Shaw’s factories. The fatality counts, workers’ bodies like voiceless accusations. The children, many of them missing fingers or toes, sacrifices to Shaw’s pursuit of wealth and power.

He puts a hand over his mouth, involuntarily. His fingers shake, when he hands back the file. “So you’re, what…tracking his associates? And you’ve come to me?”

“There’s not a law on the books for this.” Miss MacTaggart sounds as angry, as disgusted, as Charles feels. “The official governmental position is that what Shaw does overseas—what he does to his workers, most of whom are uneducated, lower-class, and desperate—is no business of ours. But he’s here, now. In our country. And there are other things we can prosecute him for. Fair trade violations. Criminal conspiracy. If we can catch him in the act, on American soil.”

“Oh,” Charles says again, realizing. “You want me to be a spy for you.” In the pause, the rain gets louder, thundering down.

“We wouldn’t put it so blatantly, but yes. Entertain his offer. See if you can get him to admit to anything illegal, on any front, here in the States.”

“I’ve already told him no, what makes you think—”

“He wants your company for a reason; the Xavier name is well-established, and respected, over here. It gives him legitimacy. And you…well…” For the first time, Miss MacTaggart actually blushes; she’s obviously not quite sure how to introduce this particular topic delicately.

Charles says it for her. “I appeal to his personal tastes. I know.”

“Well…yes. I’d do it myself, if I were in possession of the appropriate qualifications.” She’s still embarrassed, but honest, as well: she would do this, in the service of her country, if she believed it would work. Charles has no doubt that she’d succeed.

She gazes at him earnestly. Overhead, the rain patters meaningfully away. “You would be doing a great service for your country. For the people in those files. You—”

“I need to—” He looks out the window. The world is very cool and grey. The raindrops twinkle and splash, through the mist. They’d turn into bitter flecks of ice, if the air were just a few degrees colder. Erik, he thinks again.

“I would like to say yes. I think I will. But…not yet. There’s someone I need to discuss this with. I can give you an answer tomorrow. Not here.” He doesn’t want them, this, Shaw, anywhere near his life, his real life, the life he’s chosen, if he can help it.

The agents exchange glances and nod. Miss MacTaggart says, quietly, “That someone…that would be your…partner, correct? Erik Lehnsherr?” And the way she asks the question tells him first that she’s not one of those who distrusts same-sex partnerships—unlike her more skeptical partner—and second that she knows precisely who Erik is, and from where he comes.

And Charles nods, as well, and though he doesn’t say so out loud the motion feels like agreement to it all.

 

Charles is late. Erik worries, and tries not to.

He’s found roasted chicken for them, bread and cheese, not complicated, one of the simplest midday meals really, but Charles appreciates his ability with food in any case. Those blue eyes always light up when Erik cooks for him, as if the preparation of dinner or supper or breakfast is a heretofore unknown skill in the history of mankind.

Charles, of course, has never had to cook; he’d admitted that, the first morning Erik’d fed him breakfast in bed and felt the need to apologize that it was only eggs and toast. Charles’d looked at him, round-eyed, and devoured every bite.

Charles grew up with servants. And, later, the university dinners at Oxford, or cheap take-away stuff wrapped in newsprint, or late-night pub food if he was feeling tipsily adventurous. Charles has, contrary to Erik’s previous expectations, actually set foot in a kitchen, mostly as a small boy seeking comfort; but he’d been fed by the cook and the maids, who felt sorry for the boy and his bruises. Erik can’t blame them—he’s entirely sure that, if he ever meets any member of Charles’s family, someone will end up maimed or worse, and it won’t be him—but this fact does mean that Charles has never learned what to do with food other than eat it.

Erik’s always been able to cook for himself. He’d designed his apartment with kitchen space—the height of eccentricity, these days, but he’d wanted to, so he had. He likes being self-sufficient. Independent. And he _can_ cook, for himself, and for Charles; his mother always had, and he’d enjoyed watching, following her hands as she explained, the culinary transformations, the mystical creation of one dish out of disparate ingredients.

His mother’d cooked because she’d had to; his family had never been wealthy. Later, when she grew ill, the preparation of dinner had become Erik’s job. He hadn’t minded, except for the reason behind the change.

He’d forgotten, at some point, in the intervening years of bitterness and anger, how much he _likes_ being in the kitchen. Had told himself it was just another task to perform: he has to eat, after all, and if he has the skill, it’s only practical.

Charles gazes at him with unalloyed delight, every time Erik produces biscuits or jam or his mother’s matzah ball soup. And Erik ends up smiling.

Right now, Charles is even more late. And the world is raining, long streamers of water lashing against the windowpane. From this height, in this building, he can see the city, holiday lights battling valiantly against the storm. The lights are losing.

Charles, he asks the wind and the rain, not expecting an answer, please come home.

Charles doesn’t miraculously turn up on the spot. Of course not. What was he hoping for?

What _was_ he hoping for?

Erik stops, halfway back into the kitchen to check on the warm milk that’s going to be cocoa very shortly now. After a second, lowers his foot to the floor, still thinking.

Hope is such a complex word. He’d come here to America hoping for a new start, for enough money, for enough freedom, to carry out his self-appointed mission. To find Klaus Schmidt, and to find some sort of vengeance. For his parents. For his mother, who had taught him how to love the homey glow of an oven, an indoor stove.

He hopes, right now, that Charles will walk in the door, shaking water from damp waves of hair, and smile at him, and kiss him again.

He thinks about the future, where he used to see only one goal, one endpoint, no _after_ because he couldn’t afford to lose focus or become distracted. The world is different now. He woke up this morning with Charles in his bed, and sketched new designs into life over trustingly naked skin, and he’s just thought the word _home_ , and he hopes that maybe Charles thinks that word as well, about this space they share together in the world.

“I think,” he says, to the saucepan and the stove and the cheerful golden lamps, “I might be in love. With him. With Charles. I’m in love with Charles.”

And then he has to dive for said saucepan, to keep the milk from boiling over in happy agreement. He scalds a fingertip in the process. Barely notices.

 _Is_ he in love? He’s never been in love before. And it’s only been a few short days. How is a person supposed to know for sure?

He knows how he feels, when he looks at those jewel-colored eyes. How amazed and thrilled and excited he is, every morning he wakes up with playful dark hair tickling his face. How badly he wants to keep Charles safe, to touch all the scars and promise that no one will ever cause any again, not while Erik’s there to throw himself between Charles and the pain. He knows that Charles has told him stories that no one else has ever heard, about those scars and blood and old wounds, but also about brightness and the pure joy of research and the freedom of discovery, euphoric intellectual flight.

He wants to know more. He wants to know everything. And he wants to give Charles everything, in return. He’s told Charles about his past, about Schmidt—Shaw—already. Charles hasn’t run away. And Erik loves him for that courage, too. If that’s what this is. If that’s the word for all these wild emotions.

It must be. What other word is there?

Is Charles in love with _him_?

He pauses to rephrase that question. _Can_ Charles love him? Knowing everything about him? When Erik’s already seen pain in those extraordinary eyes, _caused_ that pain, once before?

Charles is happy, with him. He does believe that. He’s felt it, in the drowsy contentment of shared thoughts, afterglow, sweetness, hands touching in the park. Charles wants him. Trusts him. Enjoys his company. But Charles has never said anything about love. Charles, he thinks, might not even believe in love, given the way he was treated, by the people who should have cherished him.

Erik’s heart does a painful little twist, in his chest, at that realization. It hurts.

“If this is what love means,” he tells the milk, “it is very confusing.” It bubbles at him in liquid concurrence.

And then the key rattles in the lock, and the door opens, and Erik forgets about the milk and the confusing epiphanies, and runs over to grab a drenched greatcoat and throw both arms around the shivering shoulders underneath. “You didn’t take an umbrella?”

“I did, I just forgot it in the laboratory—”

“Charles, you—” He’s busy trying to rub some heat back into pale skin, whiter than usual, and make the shivering go away, so that he can breathe again. “Your fingers feel like ice. Come here. Sit down. Drink this. Next time hail a cab.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, it’s barely a mile—”

“Don’t make me walk you to campus and back, Charles. I will.”

“Oh, Erik…” Charles shuts his eyes, for a minute. Curls his hands around the mug of cocoa; Erik closes his own hands over them, sealing in the heat. Sits down beside him. Charles leans against him, tension evident in every muscle, every line of expressive eyebrows. That can’t only be from the walk; Charles is cold, yes, but he’s not that frail.

Erik wants to ask. Is all at once afraid.

“I didn’t take a cab because I wanted to think.” Charles admits this to Erik’s collarbone, head comfortably settled onto Erik’s shoulder. All the hair is still wet, dripping onto Erik’s shirt; the shirt doesn’t mind, and neither does he. Charles matters more.

“You…wanted to think. About what?” About us? It’s not quite a directed thought, but Charles picks it up anyway.

“Not…well, I suppose it is, actually. But not in the way you’re thinking. I had some intriguing visitors, today…” _I’m not going anywhere. Not as long as you continue feeding me delicious cocoa. You know that._

 _I know._ He believes it’s true. “Visitors?”

“From the United States government, in fact. Official badges and everything.” _They wanted to ask me about—I haven’t said yes, not yet, so please try to keep that in mind—_

“They’re not sending you back to England, are they?” They’ll have to go through him, first.

Charles gives a slightly waterlogged laugh. “No…nothing like that. They want my assistance, in fact.”

“With what?” _Charles, please just tell me._

 _All right_. “Sebastian Shaw.”

“…what?”

“They want to arrest him.” Charles looks up. Meets Erik’s eyes. “They think I can help. Since he’s not technically done anything illegal on American soil, yet. Nothing they can convict him for.”

Erik sits there trying to process. Charles sits beside him, pressed against him, and tries to explain. The words tumble over him in a wash. Sebastian Shaw. At last.

The government won’t want the man dead, of course, but that’s a technicality. Between himself and Charles, he’s fairly certain they can make it look like an accident.

Charles. Charles is saying something else, now. About his own involvement. About how they’d like to provoke Shaw into a confession. About himself being—

“No,” Erik says, flatly.

“What?” Interrupted mid-sentence, the eyebrows lift in his direction, curious. “Are you seriously objecting? I thought you’d be in favor of this. I mean—I know what you—”

“He’s not worth it.” Is that his own mouth, saying those words? Doesn’t feel like it. Someone else, making that choice, no hesitation at all. “He’s not—there is no universe in which I am going to let you be used as bait, Charles!”

“I’m certainly planning on being very active bait. I have thought about this, Erik.”

“You’re going to say yes to them? To this—insanity? Charles—”

Lightning cracks, outside, too close. They both flinch. But Charles meets his gaze again, after, wet hair falling into those eyes, not calm but unafraid.

“You told me once that you were hoping to expose him. To find—justice. If you had the money, the influence, the opportunity…”

“I will.”

“Erik,” Charles says, “I have all those things.”

Erik can’t speak, for a moment. Charles is offering him _everything_. And then he says, “No.”

“…what? Why not?”

“Why not—you honestly believe I’d let you put yourself in—you can’t want to go anywhere near him, after what he was thinking about you—”

“Erik.” The blue eyes gaze at him, serious and straightforward. They’re brighter than the lightning, when it streaks frantically across the darkened sky. “I’m not asking you to let me do anything. Not outside of the bedroom, anyway—”

“No jokes, Charles. Not right now.”

“…no. All right. No, I don’t want to go anywhere near him, but I think that what I want is less important than what we need to do. And I’m not doing this for you, or not only for you, because I am, of course. But he needs to be put away somewhere. Where he can’t do anyone any more harm. And I can help with that. Understand?”

“Maybe.” _You mean that_.

 _Yes_. “Thank you.”

 _Idealist_. “I’ll be there with you. Right outside.”

 _Not as much as you think_. “I know you will.”

 _No. More_. “Charles…I…your hands are still cold. Would you like more cocoa? I could…make more for you. If you want more. I will.”

 _I know you would. If I asked_. “Later. You can, however, kiss me now.”


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Charles and Erik both make choices, and there are consequences. Plus quite a lot of hurt!Charles and protective!Erik.

_December 22, 1897_

Erik’s waiting, outside the office, quivering with all the suppressed emotions, fury and protectiveness and passionate need for action, when Shaw emerges, and walks away.

The man doesn’t even glance in Erik’s direction. Of course not; Charles is carefully keeping Erik’s presence hidden, masked from casual observers.

That unguarded back is so close. So vulnerable, as Shaw strolls down the hallway and towards the elevator. Erik’s fingers twitch. The elevator is slow. That’s not his fault, but it could’ve been.

The coins, in his pocket, shiver and clatter against each other.

In his head, he feels a sudden wave of imbalance, shakiness, nausea. Not his own, though Charles isn’t meaning to project, isn’t meaning to ask for his presence, making no demands.

He stares at Shaw. Feels the incipient headache that isn’t his. The metal cage doors, awaiting the lift’s arrival, twitch once, then calm, abruptly.

The elevator arrives, with a pleasant chirp of fulfillment.

Now, _now_ , and Erik spins around and runs because he has to be in motion, and sprints back to Charles’s office, crashing explosively through the door.

He doesn’t see Charles, not right away.

No. Oh, no, no, please—

Charles tries to say _I’m all right_ and coughs and can’t stand up, from the floor behind his desk.

Erik, later, will have no memory of flinging himself across the room and onto the carpet at his side. What he will remember, always, forever, is the sensation of Charles reaching for him, eyes closed, collapsing into his arms as if that’s the only refuge left in the world.

He tries, as best as he can, to offer only comforting thoughts. Red-gold firelight. Soothing sheets and fuzzy blankets. The solidity of his own arms.

Charles breathes, coughs again, desperately projects the nausea one more time; Erik yanks the nearest bucket out of the broom closet in the hall, and clutches shaking shoulders, holds hair back, whispers _I’m here, you’re all right, please, please be all right,_ and attempts as hard as he can to make the words true.

 _I’m…all right_ , Charles agrees, at last, resting limply in his embrace, not even enough energy to speak. _Thank you._

 _Don’t. Just—just BE all right_. He runs a hand through that sweat-damp hair, and struggles to calm his own pounding heart. _Please._

 _I believe I did find what they were hoping I might…can’t convict on my evidence, of course, but if they can get to his private club now, right NOW, there are messages from enough underworld kingpins demanding illegal weaponry to convict him for multiple lifetimes—_ Charles isn’t breathing well. Too uneven. The headache threatens to split Erik’s skull apart.

_I’m telling Moira—Miss MacTaggart, that is—_

_Don’t hurt yourself!_

_Oh—well—just one more—_

_Charles, please!_

Silence, enormous and black, inside his head. And then, even as Erik prepares to leap desperately into the dark, flickers of light. _Still here—sorry—oh god this hurts—_

Charles doesn’t move, after Erik sets the bucket aside, this time. Not unconscious, but utterly devoid of energy, limbs falling wherever Erik coaxes them.

“Please,” he whispers, out loud because that might be easier, possibly, someway. “Please tell me what you need.”

_Hold me._

_Of course._

_He was thinking—oh, god, Erik, you can’t imagine—no, if anyone can you possibly could but—about me, too, not only the world and how easily dominated it might be, he likes vulnerability and helplessness and controlling other people’s pain, he enjoys it—_ The images flash and sear their way across Erik’s brain, glimpses of what Charles must’ve been mentally subjected to, what Shaw would like to do to him, with him, with his body.

His hands don’t clench into fists, because he’s holding Charles, but every other atom of his body tightens up in pure rage. The walls, the floor, creak, with righteous fury.

 _Erik,_ Charles murmurs, _it’s—_

_You cannot tell me that this is all right. That you are all right._

_No. But I will be. And, Erik, I knew what I was doing. The kind of mind I’d be going inside. I didn’t do this blindly. Though I admit I’d not expected it to be quite this bad…_

“Hush,” Erik says, and strokes a hand through his hair, inadequate but somehow earning a ripple of appreciation from Charles anyway. “Don’t think things at me. I can feel your headache. Can I take you home? To bed?”

“To bed, you say…”

“Not for that!” Maybe later. If, and only if, Erik can be convinced that Charles can sit up on his own.

Charles lets Erik hold him, lets Erik take care of him, and nods.

 

He’s sitting on the bed, watching Charles sleep—wondering, yet again, if he should say the words, those words, if this is what love means, that he can be so afraid and so excited and so helpless and so hopeful all at once—when a knock echoes off the door, disrupting their privacy. Charles doesn’t stir; Erik, annoyed, barefoot, in shirt-sleeves, gets up to make it stop when it comes again, preparing his best scowl.

The woman on the other side of the door has the sense to look, if not intimidated, at least abashed. But she talks regardless. “Mr Lehnsherr? I’m Miss MacTaggart. Is Professor Xavier here with you?”

Ah. Charles hadn’t mentioned that she was pretty. Erik’s not sure whether that means Charles is too preoccupied to care, or simply hasn’t noticed. “He’s asleep.”

“Oh.” She hesitates, brushes hair back from her face. Erik’s not inclined to ask her in, even if not doing so marks him as rude, given the circumstances and the closed blue eyes back in the bedroom. “I wanted to thank him. We found…Shaw wasn’t there, at his club, but with what we collected, we have enough evidence to put him behind bars. And it was Professor Xavier who gave us the location. So…’

“I can tell him you came by. When he wakes up.”

“Is he…all right?”

“He says he will be. I think it takes more than a few hours of rest to recover from being violated.” And then, because she’s looking almost as guiltily horrified as he wants her to feel, he does concede, “Not physically. Shaw never touched him. Only psychically. But that’s very much an injury. He’s in pain.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“Are you?”

“I’m sorry that he’s hurt, yes.” She’s smaller than he is, and slender, but the way Miss MacTaggart meets his eyes, then, reminds Erik that she is a government agent, after all. A woman who fights for, would die for, her country. “I can’t be sorry that we succeeded. Was that what you wanted to know?”

Erik considers this. Nods. She nods back, understanding, in return.

“How did you know we’d be here? Not his rooms at the university?”

“I would have tried there next. But your place is closer. And you would’ve wanted to get him out of there, after.”

They’re in agreement on that, too, it seems. Erik, somewhat to his own surprise, hears himself inquire, “Do you want to come in?”

“No, I have another assignment. But…again, thank you. To him, and to you. Maybe we’ll see each other around.”

Yet again, his mouth decides to offer input without consulting his brain. “If you are not busy, next week…Charles would probably like to see you…if he feels up to it…we’re potentially performing the final Christmas pageant. At the department store.”

“Perhaps I’ll find you there.” She vanishes down the hallway, soundless as only a trained operative can be; Erik appreciates the skill, academically, for a second, then turns around and closes the door and hears his own name very faintly and nearly trips over the sofa while trying to hurl himself in the direction of that drowsy voice.

“Go back to sleep.” _Is everything all right? More blankets, or—_

 _I’m fine. Not even much of a headache, now._ “Was that Moira? Miss MacTaggart?”

“Yes.” He sits down on the bed. Puts an arm around compact shoulders, making contact. The comment about the headache is half-true; it’s certainly better, but not anywhere close to gone. “She wanted to thank you. For the assistance.”

“I heard. You invited her to the department-store Christmas Eve pageant.” Charles, propped up amid the pile of blankets and sheets, all tangled hair and clear open blue eyes, is the most beautiful sight Erik’s ever encountered; he feels the sudden need to hold on more tightly, to kiss those lips, to never let go.

 _You can_. “It was kind of her to come by. And of you, to invite her. She’s a bit lonely, around the holidays. She misses her husband.”

Erik’s not quite sure how to answer that one. Too many colliding reactions, everything from _trust Charles to worry about someone else while barely upright_ to _me? kind??_ to  _husband is an interesting word and what if I, what if we—_ No. Not now. Charles needs to recover.

He settles for kissing the closest temple, gently, lips over soreness and coconut-scented hair. _Does_ _this hurt?_ “If you aren’t feeling up to the costumes, by then…or if I think you’re not…”

“Oh, you get to decide? And, no, it doesn’t. I like that; do it again.” _Erik…are YOU all right? I know—I do know you made a choice, back there. I understand._

Erik rests his cheek atop that head, thinking. Charles _does_ understand. Isn’t judging him for how close it’d been. Is only asking about regrets, in the wake of events playing out this way. Wanting to know that Erik is content with the outcome of that choice.

 _Content_ is a difficult word. Shaw is still out there. Somewhere. To be found.

Charles doesn’t say anything, out loud, but the impression that floats up through the silence promises that Erik won’t be searching alone.

He kisses Charles again, answers _yes_ , answers yes to it all.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Our Heroes confront both Shaw and the cost of heroism. Hope exists, and not everything is lost, even if some things are.

_December 24, 1897_

It’s a good day. The final day of the Christmas pageantry, both of them in costume, out on the department store floor, smiling at all the children. Erik’s smile looks rather sharklike; Charles just sighs, and distracts him occasionally with kisses, which don’t help with the display of teeth but do make the expression turn more fondly approachable.

Miss MacTaggart, who finally gives in and permits them both to call her Moira, does turn up, after all, trying to contain her laughter at the sight of both of them in full holiday regalia; Charles just grins, because nothing can ruin his Christmas, at this particular moment. Besides, he has some news, a message received only that morning; he’s trying to figure out the best way to tell Erik, and he’s hoping that Erik will be as excited, as happy, as Charles imagines he’ll be.

The reporters take pictures, and the children tug on Erik’s beard and earn not-very-intimidating scowls. Erik’s surprisingly patient with children, Charles realizes, watching; he takes them seriously, like real people, with honest emotions. Most adults don’t.

Erik also has a decent sense of spectacle, as when the toy train sets and tin soldiers occasionally begin moving by themselves around the display. The children are suitably impressed; Charles sends over a quick _I saw that_ and the heat of a kiss, and Erik blushes, under the shield of the costume.

They run out of peppermint sticks and candy canes halfway through the morning; there’s still a lengthy line of children, but they do have more treats, back in the storage room. Erik looks at Charles hopefully, at that realization, just before another small child plops herself down on his lap.

“I’ll go,” Charles tells him, grinning, “you stay here and continue the fun,” and then slips out in the wake of Erik’s inarticulate outraged splutter.

He does offer, half an apology and half a promise, some images involving himself and their bed and other uses for tinsel, and then listens to Erik struggling not to blush or worse at the society matron who comes to collect her child. Grins.

The candy canes aren’t that hard to find, they’re right on top of the depleted clutter in the storage room, and he’s turning around with the box in his hand and wondering whether he can manage to suck innocently on one in front of wintergreen eyes, when the flicker of wrongness snags his thoughts like a sinister fishhook.

It’s not a presence. It’s an absence where there should be a presence. A kind of darkness, in his head, where the swirls of light that say _people!_ to his senses normally dance. Halfway through his turn, he loses his balance, catches himself, one hand on the closest box. And then, worrying—something wrong with himself? with someone else?—he turns toward the door.

And malicious metal, in the hand of Sebastian Shaw, cracks across his face.

He hits the floor hard, gasping, dizzy. The world doesn’t make sense, and his ears are ringing. How can Shaw be here? How can Shaw be here without Charles knowing?

 _Erik!_ he tries to shout, and a foot connects with his stomach. As he’s trying to breathe, Shaw pulls him upright, shoves him into the wall. The candy canes crunch and scatter, beneath uncaring feet; bizarrely, all Charles can think is that he’ll never feel like eating a peppermint again.

“You,” Shaw says. “You did this. To me. You’ve made me lose everything.”

Charles attempts to answer, and Shaw’s eyes narrow. “You’re wondering why you can’t hear me? Or are you trying to control me, Charles? And I did guess, about you. Telepathy, correct? There’s no other way they could’ve known. You were in my mind.”

There’s no point in denying that, so Charles goes with, “Unfortunately, yes,” a show of bravado that makes Shaw laugh and then press an arm across his throat, heavy and unyielding. Charles fights. Fingers and nails and all his fading strength. Can’t find air.

“Unfortunately for you,” Shaw says, “I always expected, someday, I’d run across one of you. So I had this made.” He taps his head; Charles, through the encroaching dazzle of airlessness, can’t resist the curiosity, even now.

The man’s wearing headgear. Positively medieval, he thinks, distantly. But effective. Nothing but a void where a mind should be.

“It’s a very rare metal. Only enough for one. Although…I do wonder. What is your range, Charles? Can you talk to anyone, from here? Or shall I try this metal on you, instead?”

Oh god. Oh god no. He can’t even imagine. Literally. He thinks of being struck blind and deaf and dumb all at once, and knows it’ll be like all of that, and nothing like that, like nothing at all.

“Perhaps not. I do need you sane.” Shaw releases the arm, just enough. Charles sags against the wall. It tries as hard as it can to hold him up. “Tell me, then. Can you talk to anyone from here? And be honest, Charles.”

“Everyone.” Speaking hurts. But then, so does everything else; and he mentally crosses his fingers, saying the word.

And Shaw laughs, mirthlessly. “Good try. But we both know you’re lying. It’s all right; I’d’ve lied. It must be so difficult, being helpless, and yet so close to help…”

And Charles can breathe again. Thank god. He calls out _Erik!_ one more time, an outflung lifeline in the dark, as Shaw pulls him out of the storage room and toward the back stairs. Feels the connection, hazy with pain and shock: Erik’s heard him. Erik’s there.

 

Erik’s just asked for a momentary break, wondering what could be taking so long with the candy canes and whether Charles actually might’ve meant that as some sort of invitation and if so whether Charles will be waiting in the storage room; he stands up, and suddenly the fear and pain slam into him like a careening freight train, iron and speed and crushing weight through his bones.

He staggers, gets control, clings to the wall and to Moira, who’s materialized out of nowhere in support. “Mr Lehnsherr—Erik—?”

“Charles—” _Charles? Charles, say something!_

 _Shaw—in the storage room—gun—_ And another burst of pain, interspersed with impressions, physicality, fists and feet and metal, Charles on the ground, struggling for air. _We’re—he’s heading for my office, I think, I don’t know why, I can’t—_

_We’re coming, Charles, hang on—_

“The office,” he says, to Moira, “Shaw,” and she nods, and they run.

 

The halls are deserted. Of course they are; everyone’s downstairs enjoying the festivities. The building’s never felt more unlike a friend.

Shaw throws him into the office so hard that he lands on his knees. He doesn’t bother to get up, though. Shaw can come to him.

Which is in fact what happens. Painfully.

“Now that I have your attention…now that we’re up here, out of the way…I need you to do something for me, Charles. Here.”

Papers, flung in his direction; Charles looks at them, looks up, has to laugh. It’s not _real_. Too incongruous to be real. He’s on the floor of his office, still dressed in the ludicrous elf costume from the pageant, blinking blood out of his eyes, and Shaw wants him to sign papers turning over legal control of the Xavier Company, the company he’s been planning to sell all along.

“You think this is amusing, do you?” More pain happens. Shaw knows how to use the gun, how to keep hold of it and snap it back to point between his eyes through every inadvertent recoil. “Fight back all you would like. I’m one of you, you know. What is the term you like to employ? Gifted. Hitting me—or kicking me, yes—only feeds me energy. Energy I can use, in turn, on you.” The backhand sends him stumbling, or would, except the hand fastens into his hair, jerks his head back.

“I do like seeing you like this. So powerless, because of me. You were listening, weren’t you, that first time I met you? You know what I’d like to do with you. And you know you can’t stop me. Be honest, Charles…you enjoy that, just a bit, don’t you? Being held down, being helpless, instead of ordering your life the way you want it arranged?”

Charles, sickened, shaking, retorts, when he can talk, “As I recall you’re the one who’s helpless, you’ve lost all your assets to the government and you’re asking me for my signature,” and of course it’s a stupid comment to make to the man with the gun, but it’s that or give in to the terror.

 _Erik_ , he whispers.

_Coming, Charles, we’re nearly there, please hold on—_

“You do make a good point.” Shaw studies him.”You had to push, didn’t you? Federal investigations. Criminal charges. You did this.”

“I believe you did it to yourself.” This earns a brutal slam of the gun barrel into his stomach. Charles doubles over, tries to find air again, straightens up. His midsection throbs.

“I won’t lose everything,” Shaw snarls. “You’ll sign this company over to me. Everything open and aboveboard. No one’s ever investigated you. And then you and I will go on a vacation, I think. Someplace tropical. I’ll keep you naked, I imagine. Constantly.”

“Well,” Charles says, “it can’t be worse than listening to you talk,” and this time he doesn’t even register the motion before the metal crashes against his head. When he falls, he falls hard, into the desk, and that’s going to bruise, too, but that’s nonexistent compared to the flare of pain from his temple, the sudden frightening disorientation.

Erik, he thinks, to himself because anything else hurts more, I’m running out of distractions, hurry, please.

When he touches the side of his head, and looks at his fingertips, he can see the blood.

Shaw considers their respective positions. Then smiles, cruelly. “I like seeing you on your knees. You can sign from down there. Here.” A contemptuous hand tosses pen and papers his direction. Charles looks at them, looks up, and very deliberately raises eyebrows—seriously?—in return.

The tip of the gun barrel touches his face. It’s almost gentle, a gruesome caress. Until it isn’t, digging into the new wound, and he almost passes out from the agony.

“I don’t sign documents without having read them,” he says, and Shaw actually laughs, genuinely amused by the defiance. Says, “You entertain me, Charles, you can have one minute, go on.”

Charles thinks again, _Erik_ , and picks up the top sheet, from the floor.

 

Erik’s at the top of the stairs, in motion, when the starburst explosion of Charles’s pain knocks him off his feet.

Moira stops, too. “What’s wrong? Are you all right? Is he?”

Erik can only shake his head. He doesn’t know. The pain is too bright and bewildering, and as it fades it leaves behind an eerie vertigo. A concussion? Something worse? Something _worse?_

 _Charles!_ he shouts.

No words, not a proper answer; Charles must be too badly hurt to concentrate. But he’s alive; that sense of _Erik/yes/here/together_ is real. So is the slightly incoherent warning that follows, a jumble of images and impressions that leave Erik blinking in their wake.

“A gun,” he gets out, for Moira to hear. “He’s—holding Charles at gunpoint. In the office. Charles doesn’t think—he’s wearing something, some metal, that keeps out telepathic senses, but Charles thinks he won’t kill him—I mean Charles, Shaw isn’t going to kill him, he wants him alive for—” He can’t say that part. Not out loud.

And Moira nods, and slips a hand under Erik’s arm, and gets him back to his feet, and they keep running.

He doesn’t stop at the door of the office, just sends it flying with a wave—thanks every deity in the world for metal hinges and knobs—and both Shaw and Charles look up, and Erik shouts “Let him go!” not because he thinks that Shaw will listen but because he’s so sickeningly afraid he’s already too late.

There’s so much blood. It paints Charles’s face in mocking holiday red. Drips stain the incongruous elf costume—it’ll never be wearable again—and the blue eyes fill with relief, when they find Erik’s, but they’re not quite focused.

Moira aims her gun. Shaw laughs.

 _Erik_ , Charles shouts, from the floor, _helmet_ —

He yanks it off with a thought. Flings it across the room. Shaw starts to say a word and then ceases moving, frozen in place.

 _Erik_ , Charles says, panting, _I can’t hold this for long, hurry, please…_

_Are you all right?_

_No but that’s not important—_ The mental voice snaps off, as Shaw manages a blink, a fraction of a movement, and Charles grits his teeth and tightens his control.

Shaw. Here. Helpless. Held in place for him.

“Erik,” Moira says, “we can take him into custody, now,” and starts fumbling for handcuffs.

They fly out of her hands. Plunge into the opposite wall, and stick there.

_Erik—_

Shaw. Schmidt. At his mercy.

_Charles, you did say once you would gift-wrap him for me, did you not?_

_Erik please don’t—you don’t have to do this, we’ve already got him, and he’s lost everything—_

_Not everything._ Moira’s gun jerks itself from her hands. Presses itself hard against the fragile skin of Shaw’s forehead. It’s not how he’s ever planned this moment, even though he’s pictured it hundreds of different ways. But it’ll do.

_Erik, please!_

_He deserves to die!_

_Perhaps but not here, not now, not when he can’t hurt anyone—_

_He hurt you!_

_If you give me a moment I can try to—_

_What? Alter his mind? Remove his will to hurt people? Isn’t that also killing him, Charles?_

_I—yes, in a way, but not like this, not when you’re doing it out of revenge! If you stop to think—_

_I have thought. For years._ The trigger draws back. Shaw doesn’t move, because he can’t. Because Charles hasn’t let him go.

Charles continues to not let him go, but keeps looking at Erik, through all the blood and the pain.

Erik breathes in. Out. Hears his own heartbeat, thunder in his veins.

Shaw studies Erik, only moving his eyes; Charles must be slipping, just a bit. He glances at Charles, and back at Erik. And smiles.

The gun’s been touching his forehead the entire time. And Shaw _is_ one of them, after all. The transfer of  energy’s simple. It’s a basic physics lesson.

There’s a second lesson there, too. About the reaction for every action: Shaw is not willing to live with the consequences of what he’s done, of his failure.

Erik can’t believe it, in that first second, when that body hits the ground. Doesn’t believe it, really. It can’t be over, just like that. In the following second, he lets himself feel the satisfaction: it _is_.

In the third second, he realizes that Charles has also silently fallen to the floor.

Someone’s shouting, then. _No_ and _please_ and Charles’s name, frantically, desperately, pleading for it not to be true. The world fades to a dull haze, only his hands shaking those limp shoulders, Charles’s closed eyes, head falling back over Erik’s arm.

He doesn’t comprehend that he’s started crying until he tries to talk, and can’t force any words out through the burning tears.

Erik, Moira’s saying, Erik, he’s not dead, that’s a pulse, I’m pretty sure that’s a pulse, and Erik fixates on motionless eyelashes, all he can comprehend, and demands that the universe somehow make this all untrue.

Shaw did this on purpose, to them. One last act of malice. He must’ve known.

Charles must have known, too. The entire time he’d been inside Shaw’s mind, holding the man in place for Erik to kill or not kill or injure at will, he must’ve known.

“Charles,” Erik says, through the tears, “you did this for me, you idiot, I know you did, but I don’t want you to be a fucking martyr, I want _you_ , you can’t leave me, please, please, I love you,” and Charles doesn’t move.

The blood is flowing again, freely, from the side of Charles’s head, jarred loose by the collision with the floor. It stains Erik’s hands. Charles’s shirt. The carpet. The world.

Charles continues to not move even after the physician arrives, at a run, panting and sweating his way up the steps. The police, outside, cordon off the building. The reporters take Moira’s terse “No comment” and spin fantasies about the depredations of Sebastian Shaw and the heroism of Erik and Charles, putting themselves in harm’s way to capture a villain.

Erik doesn’t want to be a hero. Erik doesn’t want anything except the sight of blue eyes opening to find his, of Charles waking up, dazed and smiling and alive.

They don’t. Charles doesn’t. There’s no color left in the universe. All grey.

The doctor recommends that Charles be taken to a hospital, and then, in a lower tone, inquires whether Erik’s the next of kin. Erik stares at him, and feels his hands begin to shake.

“I—he’s my—I’m in love with him.” So inadequate. So very much too late. Why couldn’t he have said those words earlier? While Charles was awake and alive?

The doctor nods, not unsympathetically. “We can treat the superficial injuries, and the physical effects of the ordeal, but the rest…there appears to have been some serious neurological trauma. And our hospitals, well…we can keep him there indefinitely, of course, we have the space, and I doubt money is an object for—” At Erik’s audible snarl, the man gulps, and leaves that train of thought behind.

“—I only meant that—given the current state of the medical profession in New York—there’s really very little we can do, at that point. He’ll awaken, or he won’t. Do you understand?”

Erik nods, on instinct alone.

“All right, then,” the doctor says, and leaves him.

Time goes by in uneven flickering chunks. One minute they’re entering the hospital. Then other hands try to take Charles away from him to dress some of the sluggishly bleeding wounds. Erik simply refuses to go. After a while, and two altercations with burly orderlies, no one tries to make him.

After that, there’s a lot of silence.

Raven appears, eyes red with crying. She throws herself into Erik’s arms, and he wants to panic, because he’s never had to comfort anyone in his life, but he doesn’t have any room to spare for panic. He pats her on the back, awkwardly. Feels numb inside.

Logan comes by and stands in the doorway and his hands tense into impotent fists. Erik knows exactly how he feels.

All of Charles’s handpicked graduate students drop by, within the next few hours. Erik’s not sure how they find out. Maybe Logan’s told them. Or maybe Emma Frost, who pops up inexplicably and hands him a piece of paper.

“What—”

“It’s your official commendation. From the United States government. Assisting in the apprehension of a dangerous criminal. Do you want it?”

“I don’t care.” He doesn't. Maybe later, someday, in some other future, some other timeline, Shaw and a mission and a sense of completion and the rest of the world might matter again. Not now. Not now.

Emma sighs. And then lifts her hand and pats him on the shoulder. Twice.

Erik attempts to process this interaction. Fails.

“I’m trying to be comforting.”

And, for some reason, Erik feels his mouth try to smile.

“Don’t do that,” Emma says, “you look like a heartbroken shark. Anyway, I’m here for selfish reasons, all right? I want to keep working for you, now that you’re a hero. And I expect a pay raise.”

She pats him on the shoulder one more time, though, before she leaves.

Eventually, they all leave. Raven doesn’t want to go at all, but she’s falling asleep on her feet, and Logan nods at Erik, and takes her home.

Alone, in the white-walled antiseptic hospital room, Erik looks back at Charles. And Charles, with terrible finality, doesn’t move.

“Please,” Erik says, one more time, and picks up the closest hand in his. Those hands are always so expressive, always in motion. Toying with pens and ink and paper. Resting supportively on someone else’s arm. Nudging chessmen across black-and-white squares, as blue eyes sparkle. Etching heat over Erik’s naked skin.

The fingers, in his, remain still.

“I love you,” he says. “I will always love you.”

He says, “I’m here, Charles, I’m holding your hand, if you can feel that, you can come back to me, please, please look at me now.”

He says, “I’m sorry.” And then he says it again.

“I’ll read your ridiculous scientific romances,” he promises. “I’ll read them _to_ you. Right here. You don’t even have to sit up. Only let me know that you’re listening. You—I meant to tell you this, too, yesterday, I saw the advertisement in the paper, that author you like, Herbert Wells, he’ll be in New York for a lecture tour in the spring, something about his next book—I thought you would want to go. I thought we could go. If you wake up we can go. Please wake up. Charles, _please_.”

Nothing.

Into the afternoon, the evening, nothing at all.

Exhausted, feeling ancient and weary, he shuts his eyes. They feel scratchy, out of tears, though not out of grief. That emotion creeps into his chest, and makes itself a nest of lead there.

He can’t let himself sleep. If he does, Charles might wake up without him there. He refuses to consider the other possibilities, potentialities that might come to pass with lapsed vigilance. He feels each hour and minute, as they tiptoe apologetically past. Closes his eyes again, just for a moment.

_Erik_

The word drifts into his head, more a suggestion than a sound; half-drowsing, tangled in hopeless visions of sleepy mornings and laughing eyes and cinnamon freckles, Erik whispers back _Charles, I love you_ , and forgets to remember that that warmth should be unreal.

And then he sits up and shouts “Charles!” in his head and out loud, everywhere.

Charles, on the bed, hasn’t moved. Eyes still closed. Skin nearly as pale as the colorless sheets. The room’s full of antique fading light, the dusty dwindling of the afternoon, and nothing’s changed at all.

But it has, it _has_ , he knows that voice, knows he heard it. He must have. If he hasn’t, if he’s only been imagining the sound, then nothing _has_ changed, and Charles is still—

The dust specks in the air fall through gilded lowering rays and make no sound when they land. Erik shuts his eyes, against all the despair.

_Erik?_

He snaps his head up so quickly that the motion hurts, but Charles hasn’t stirred. But that _is_ Charles’s voice, recognizable, enticingly accented, beloved, hanging in the air.

 _Charles_ , he whispers.

 _Yes_.

And the stillness, the silence, trembles with soul-deep affirmation.

_Charles, you’re alive._

_I’m…working on that. I think_. The thoughts arrive like outlines, the sketches of ideas, black and white and frayed around the edges. Charles, yes, Erik knows the shapes and hues and echoes of that mental touch in the depths of his soul, and this is Charles, but…different, now. As if glimpsed through a distant reverberation of mirrors.

He’s caught between blazing joy and lightless despair, teetering from one extreme to the other. Charles is alive. Charles is injured. Terribly so.

_It’s not…this will heal, I’m fairly certain. Given enough time. I’m only…it’s difficult to relearn how to be alive._

_Charles, I’m so sorry._

_It’s all right. It isn’t your fault. In any case, I have done this once before._

_Before—_

_When my father killed himself._

_Oh—_ Erik can’t breathe, for a moment, hands locked around the immobile ones on the sheets. Not from the content of the statement; it makes a sort of logical sense. But it’s the way Charles says it: so matter-of-fact, a description of events, no emotion at all. That’s not his Charles, not the person who’d once told him that story, secure in the shelter of Erik’s arms and bed.

 _Sorry_ , Charles says, swiftly, acknowledging the absence for what it is. _I’m not…it’s hard to…to remember why some things matter, from here. Where they fit, into the me that was—that was me, I suppose. And I must admit that it’s harder than I remember; possibly I was more flexible, as a child…_

 _I love you._ The tears leave scalding tracks along his face. He can’t lift a hand to brush them away, because that’d mean releasing Charles’s hands. He rests his cheek atop their joined fingers, instead. And the wetness seeps between interlaced joints. _I love you, and I’m so sorry, I did this, you did this for me, and  you’re—oh, god, Charles—_

_You didn’t do this. Perhaps I did it for you—did I?—but you weren’t the one who killed us._

_I might’ve been._ He’d been so close. He could have done it. He’ll never know whether he would have.

 _But you weren’t._ Charles breathes, in and out, in their heads. _You love me._

_Yes, oh yes, always yes, I do—_

_Talk to me? That…helps, I think. You thinking about me. Memories. What you think of, when you think of who I am. Reconstruction._

Reconstruction. Rebuilding. He can do that. He’s an architect. He _can_ do that.

Foundations, he thinks. Tea and scars and quixotic scientific curiosity. Love of books old and new. Love of Raven and of graduate students and of all things liquid chocolate. Pineapple ices and coconut shampoo, oddly enticing glimpses of the exotic amid British-Empire coziness. The contagious excitement in that voice when someone mentions the work of Charles Darwin.

Newer memories, twining their way in like golden harpstrings joining the melody. A dusty storage room and repurposed costume bells. Blue eyes, lifting to find his across the black-and-white squares of a chessboard. Fingers meeting, glancing away, meeting again; Erik’s own breathless amazement as Charles kisses him, mid-sentence, in the middle of the winter-decorated park.

He gives Charles all those memories. Holds nothing back. Not the arguments, the cold pavement where Charles once spent a wretched night, the misunderstandings; equally, not the lazy sweetness of mornings in bed, bodies curled together like spoons, sketches and book notes and sleep-heated skin. Shared bathtubs and stitches and promises. Scaffolding and support. Beautiful and multifaceted, glinting in the sun.

Charles doesn’t speak, only listens. With intent.

Around them, the universe coils itself up more tightly, poised. The tension stretches out, vibrates, shudders. And snaps.

Eyes open, glorious blue against the whiteness of the pillow. There are still bandages crossing that face, the edges of bruises peeking out from beneath. But even those’re merely decoration for the moment.

Charles breathes in. And then asks, carefully, voice uneven, “Erik…?”

And Erik’s world splinters apart.

“You—you don’t remember me? Us? I—Charles, I—I love you—” His voice breaks. Along with his heart. Stops working, just like that.

Too much uncertainty, in that single word, in that beloved voice saying his name. Too much confusion, and regret.

Charles has continued holding his hands. Squeezes them, now. “It’s not…I do remember you. I—we were—you love me. I know you love me. I know who you are. But…I’m so sorry, Erik…That’s all it is. Knowing. Not feeling. You, Raven…the world….Erik, are you crying?”

He shakes his head, not so much a denial as a collapse.

“Don’t. Please.” Charles actually sounds worried, now. Of course. Charles worries about everyone, even strangers, if they’re in distress.

“Erik,” Charles says. “Please. It’s not—I’m not gone, not completely, I don’t think. I can see…it’s like being paralyzed, possibly. Knowing what you want to do, what sensations used to exist…the motor functions just aren’t there. Yet. I hope. Please don’t cry, come on, help me sit up, and maybe you can find me tea, I’m hideously thirsty…?”

Like being paralyzed. It’s an apt metaphor. He feels frozen with loss. Sleet turning to ice along all his veins. And Charles is looking at him, trying to make him smile, giving him something to do. So generous, so concerned, so _polite_.

“Tea…”

“Yes, please. If you wouldn’t mind.”

“I wouldn’t—of course I wouldn’t—I—I don’t want to leave you.” Unless Charles wants him to leave. Unless Charles isn’t comfortable lying here, injured, beside a person he’d used to know.

“I don’t want you to leave.” Fingers tap gently on his hand. _I may not know—exactly—what we were to each other, then, but I know how I feel with you here now._

“There’s a kettle at the nurses’ station…” _How…do you feel?_

 _Safe_. “I’m certain they won’t mind. It’s for a good cause.”

“Yourself being a good cause?” _Charles, I love you._

 _I know. I do know. I did—I do, I know that I do—love you, too. I only—I can’t quite_ — “Welfare of patients is always a good cause, is it not?”

 _…you don’t have to. Say it. Not now._ Someday, someday, _please_. But not now, not when Charles takes the teacup from him and their fingers brush and a blush starts somewhere along those bruised cheekbones, pinkly demonstrating the precise extent of those memories, their existence and their distance from this room.

Charles takes a sip, looks at him, smiles. “Thank you.” _We ordered tea—no, I ordered tea, in a coffeehouse, the first night we met? And we played chess. Did you win, or did I?_

“I won. The first time. You looked surprised. And then you laughed. And I lost rather badly the second time, because I couldn’t stop thinking about how beautiful you were. Are. Does this—do you remember any of this?” He’s sitting on the side of Charles’s bed, probably against some sort of hospital rules, but someone has to offer unnecessary help as freckled fingertips hold a teacup, right?

The cotton of the sheets is cool and impassive as snow. Through the small heavy-glazed window, city lights’re visible, all the colors of the season blurring into an indistinct swirl of ruby and emerald and gold.

“I have the memory.” Charles taps the bandage, on his head, with one finger. Erik winces, in sympathy. Then orders, “Don’t touch that,” albeit belatedly.

“It’s fine. Doesn’t even hurt, at least not much. Not that. The memories…I am sorry about this.” The treasure-box eyes, all sapphire and onyx, meet his, heart-tearingly sincere. “I don’t know why…it might be the injuries, this time. Or the overexertion. Or it’s only that I’m older and it’s harder to find all those pieces again. I don’t know.” _It’s like…seeing the outlines, the sketches, but not the painting. No color, to fill in the lines. I’m so sorry._

Erik shakes his head. Looks down, at the indifferent hospital sheets, then up, at Charles, at the teacup, at the earnest apology. “Don’t. This isn’t your fault.” If it’s anyone’s fault, it’s his. For getting Charles involved in his mission, his life, his revenge.

Charles, who smiles at him and holds his hand from a hospital bed. Charles who can’t remember the colors of their life.

“It isn’t your fault, either. You didn’t kill him.” Charles sets down the teacup. Studies him, serious now. “Trust me, please. As a disinterested observer—and of course I’m not, though I am, at the moment—I do know what happened. And you did not do this, Erik, you know that. I chose to help stop him. I chose to be involved. Don’t take that away from me.”

Charles is right, of course. As Charles so often has been, about him. The comfort is a cruel one. With sharp little teeth.

“Of course I’m right,” Charles agrees, and smiles, and Erik says back, “Yes, no need to feel smug about it,” and the moment almost feels like recuperation.

“You know…it might help to…leave the hospital. To…see some familiar places. Objects. Reminders. Could you—could we—try that?”

Anything. Everything. “Tomorrow. After you’ve been given permission by the doctors.”

“Plural?”

“ _All_ the doctors, Charles.”

“Oh, seriously...I feel perfectly—well, not perfectly, but mostly—fine.”

“All the doctors, plus myself _and_ your sister.”

“Were you always this overprotective? Because we may need to have a talk. Oh—sorry, too soon, I didn’t mean that…” _Here._

 _You’re offering me your tea?_ “I made this for you.”

“I know you did.” _And I’m sharing it with you_.

And the red and green and gilded lights shimmer a bit more clearly through the window, as a few of the clouds lift, outside.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which happy endings are found at last. Healing, commitment, love, joyfulness, and also some quite enjoyable sex.

_December 25, 1897_

He takes them to the Columbia laboratory, first. Charles’s laboratory. He rationalizes that it’s closer, that it’ll be familiar and yet not too personal, not too intense for still-reforming memories.

Inside, he knows he’s a coward. Can’t face bringing Charles home to his rooms, their rooms, the space they’ve been sharing, and witness their bathtub and windows and pillows being met with that same gaze, that quizzical blue.

He’d caught Raven’s arm, that morning, outside the hospital room. Had had to watch her face, as he explained: first that Charles was awake, and physically all right; second, that Charles wasn’t all right in any real sense of the words. She’d closed her eyes, absorbing the impact. He’d put a hand on her shoulder, all he could think to do, and let her go in.

The doctors’d agreed, earlier that day, that Charles could go home. No strenuous activity, not while he was still recovering, but there was no point in someone technically fit and mobile taking up the bed. And Charles had looked at Erik with hope and just a hint of self-satisfaction—see, I am fine, I told you so—and Erik’d been left breathless by the wave of affection, and longing, and heartache, that crashed through his body.

The laboratory’s quiescent, placidly awaiting the start of term, around them. Specimens watch them from jars; microscopes peer up through focused lenses, intrigued. The cloudy light of afternoon, illumination through mist that wants to be rain, follows them around.

Charles touches a bench, a microscope, a slide, neatly labeled in his own writing, beside it. Charles has elegant writing, when he bothers, a product of years-ago etiquette drills; mostly, Erik knows, he doesn’t bother, no longer as any sort of rebellion but because he doesn’t worry about taking the time for line-perfect p’s and q’s.

He, Erik, knows that about Charles. He wonders whether Charles himself still knows.

Charles touches the microscope again. Smiles, very faintly, a shared private joke between himself and the instrument. Erik holds his breath.

The door clatters behind them and disrupts the moment. They both turn, Erik thoroughly prepared to commit bodily harm should anyone interrupt Charles now.

“Oh—Professor—sorry, I didn’t expect—I was coming over to get some—I talked to Raven and she said and I thought maybe you’d want your notes or some books or something that might—obviously you had the same idea, or are you better, I’m so sorry, are you—feeling better, or…?” Hank eventually runs out of words, machinery out of steam, and trails off.

“…Hank,” Charles says. Erik can’t tell whether that’s real recognition or excellent pretense, but he suspects the latter. “Thank you. And, no, I’m afraid what you’ve heard remains unfortunately true. But I do remember all the factual events, you know, so if you wanted to ask me about your research topic, I’m still going to ask you whether you’ve looked into Schleiden’s cell theory as deeply as you should…”

“I _have_ ,” Hank protests, promptly, sounding understandably startled, “over the last few weeks, since you told me to, and I had questions about how well his observation of cell development in medusae plants translates to other species, and—”

“It does, though, if you examine the—where’s the—oh, there it is, Hank, hand me that box and come here and look at this—”

Erik takes a few steps away, and he’s smiling, he can feel himself smiling, but it’s a smile built on shaky ground. Insufficient support, at the base. Won’t hold for long.

He leans against the doorframe, and watches Charles remember how to get excited, how to love something that’s a piece of his heart and a light in those eyes, something that isn’t Erik.

The rain begins, out in the world, tapping compassionate rhythms on the roof overhead. It’s isolating, the three of them—two of them, really, plus Erik—alone in the laboratory, in the world.

There’s a sagging spot in the corner of the room, where hastily assembled walls don’t quite meet evenly. He pictures how he might redesign it, reconstruct the space. Higher ceilings. Larger windows, because Charles likes them, reminders of the world he’s constantly trying to explore and improve. A larger window there would mean having to move a load-bearing wall, so maybe if he puts it _there_ , and then he also won’t have to think about the way that Charles is smiling at Hank, that brilliant unabashed grin that’d caught Erik’s heart the very first time.

Charles also likes bookshelves, he thinks; and, determinedly, starts calculating where he could manage built-in shelves. If Charles ever wants them.

He’s pondering the far wall when he feels a gentle tap on his arm, in his thoughts. _Erik?_

 _Charles?_ “I thought you were occupied…”

“I was. I think I’ve given him enough to think about, though; I’ve lost him to the German botanists for a while. But, Erik, this…I remember this.” _Thank you_. The eyes’re sparkling up at him, bright and happy, and Erik pushes aside any feelings other than relief and joy on Charles’s behalf.

“You’re welcome. If this is working…is there someplace else you’d like to go?” _Anywhere you want_. The rain splashes from the eaves, tumbles down, flings itself loudly into the ground. _If you…if you want Hank to come along…_

The ocean-canyon eyes blink, in surprise. “Hank? Certainly not. He’s busy. And I have you for company.” _I enjoy your company. I am…I might be a bit cold. It’s raining, you know. Can we go home?_

“Of course.” He snatches discarded gloves from the nearest table, grabs Charles’s hands, starts to put the one on the other, and then stops, faced with the somewhat incredulous expression.

“Ah…did I…did we…you get to dress me?”

“Um.” The only good explanation for that impulse, involving as it does their occasional bedroom dynamic and Erik’s need to take care of Charles, in those raw and vulnerable moments after, in all the moments when Charles needs care, actually makes him blush. Which then makes Charles blush, seeing those thoughts.

“…oh. Never mind. You, ah. Go on. I wasn’t actually objecting. Can we find hot cocoa, on the way?”

“I…did say anything you’d like.” _Charles, I enjoy your company, too. You—I would like you to know that_.

“I do,” Charles promises, and leaves his now-gloved hands in Erik’s, and smiles.

 

He’s not certain what Charles means by home, not yet; the university accommodations’re closer, so they stop there first. Charles licks cocoa from his lips, tilts his head, considers. “It’s not very large, is it?”

“You…well, you’re visiting faculty, you said…it’s temporary…”

“Oh. There was something I’d meant to tell you, about that. I think I might’ve been waiting to ask you a question, though.” Another sip. Erik watches him swallow, entranced. “I was…nervous about asking you. But I suppose I should tell you now, since I’ve said something?”

“If you…whatever you want to do.”

“They asked me if I might like to stay on. Permanently, I mean. As this semester went so swimmingly.” Charles finishes off the cocoa; automatically, Erik takes the cup and sets it out for disposal, head full of white noise.

“What…what did you say?”

“I believe I said I would like to say yes, but I needed some time to think about it.” Charles examines his front door, squares his shoulders, reaches for the knob. “So this is where I live? Feels like I’ve seen pictures.”

“You…lately you’ve not been here very much…but—”

Charles steps across the threshold. Over to the bookshelves, almost immediately. Erik stops talking, in the hope that his thoughts will cease spinning and settle down.

Charles has been asked to stay. Charles could stay here, in New York, with him. Permanently.

Charles had never been planning to stay, before.

Charles had wanted to ask him a question. Erik thinks of the possibilities, of the possibility he wants more than anything, the question he’s been beginning to hope he might ask those blue eyes, too, if he could be the one to say the words first. If it’s the same question, that question, he’ll say yes now and forever and for all time.

It won’t be that question, now. How can it be? Charles doesn’t know him. Can’t be in love, so deeply in love, with someone who’s only here as an ink-sketch outline in that injured mind. Someone who, despite every logical argument for shared blame in that dispassionate head, has to know, someplace deep down, that this is Erik's fault, Erik's darkness, that's erupted between them with such savage consequences.

Erik digs fingernails into his palm. Breathes. Watches Charles try to relearn himself, bit by broken bit, room by shadowy room.

As Charles wanders out of the hallway and back into the sitting room, one finger trails over wood, and up, along eager book-spines. A few more steps; uncertain eyes seek out a doorway, a table, the curves where the ceiling greets the walls. And then they return, and meet his.

“Erik, I…I recognize this, I do, but…is this…home?”

All the words vanish, in the frankness of that question. None left, in his head, on his lips.

“Charles,” he manages, finally, “this is…these are…you live here. You, and Raven…”

“I…” Charles bites his lip. Looks down. Breaks Erik’s heart all over again. “I just thought…I mean, I remember…or I dreamed that, maybe…we were living somewhere else? You, and I? Someplace with…windows. An impressive bathtub. Your stove and soup pots. You…”

His heart’s cracking for a different reason, now. “I used to—I’d been cooking for you. For us. You remember that…”

“That was real…You had a bed. We had a bed. And I woke up cold, that first night, and you didn’t have extra blankets, but you had your coat, and you put that over me…”

“And you said you felt perfectly warm. I did go out and buy blankets. The next day. Charles…”

 _I love you_ , Charles says, and that’s warm, too, like summer unexpectedly blossoming in January. _I can feel that._

 _I love you,_ Erik answers, though it’s not very coherent, through the flood and thaw.

 _I feel that, too. Not everything, not yet, but…that, yes_. “Can we…go home, now? I do recall this place, I mean, I recall these rooms…” Another touch, fingers alighting on the nearest bookshelf, more confidence this time. “But I think I’d like to see our home.”

So they do.

Charles walks in the door first. Turns around, not needing to say anything, and smiles. The happiness, the sense of _yes/right/this/you_ , bursts around them like a warm summer shower, like the cozy patter of drops outside.

Erik takes his hands again, because he can’t do anything else. The metal sculptures shiver and chime, in their resting places, not from cold.

“You have gloves on.” _May I…take them for you?_

“Since we’re home? Yes.” _Not planning on going anywhere else, any time soon_. Charles smiles again, as Erik slides wool slowly over his fingers, knit fabric revealing pale skin; the last finger on that left hand catches, briefly, and Charles breathes in, and the air changes, shifts, grows taut.

“You…said you were cold, earlier…” He’s removing Charles’s other glove, methodically, regardless. Inch by inch.

“I’m not cold any longer.”

“And you…are feeling all right. Your head…” He lifts one hand. Brushes windswept hair out of Charles’s face. Leaves his fingers there, skimming a question over tender skin, avoiding the lingering bandage in that one wounded spot.

“My head,” Charles announces, “is absolutely fine,” and then takes a step forward, pressed up against Erik now, intoxicatingly near. When Erik breathes, he imagines he can taste that coconut soap, scenting all the inviting skin.

“I think I would like to kiss you,” Charles tells him, looking up into his eyes; Erik says, “Wait, are you certain that you—” and lips meet his with decided force, Charles kissing him as if one or both of their lives could depend on it, as if they’ve never been here before and never will be again.

They have, and they haven’t. Not like this.

This time, Charles tastes like hot cocoa and winter rain. Like the glitter of tinsel and the laughter in their heads. Erik never wants to come back up for air. Charles can be his air.

_You taste delicious, too. I knew you would._

_Charles, you—_

_No. I’m afraid not. But this is real, this, me wanting this—wanting you. This me, who I am right now. I want you._

_I want this—I want you—but—_

_You bought me hot cocoa_ , Charles says, and does something with his tongue that makes Erik’s knees go weak, _and you sat at my bedside, and you thought about windows in my laboratory because you know I like them, and I may not remember when I first fell in love with you, but I remember these things, here and now. And this is real._

_I love you._

_I love you, too. Take me to bed? I assume I’ll love that, as well._

“Oh,” Erik tells him, because this much needs to be said out loud, not so much a promise as a prediction, “you _will_.” And then grabs those hands again and pulls Charles into the other room and into the bed, in a flurry of clothing and sheets and discarded undergarments.

Charles gasps, when Erik collects his curious hands and pins them down against the mattress. “Stay put. I have plans for you."

“I was hoping I might be able to touch you—”

“Oh…well, in that case.” He rolls over on top of Charles, all that body weight, making sure to use his muscles to best advantage. Charles doesn’t try to struggle, only relaxes into Erik’s grip and lets himself be held down, wide-eyed.

“Sufficient touching for you?”

“Erik—” This time Charles does wiggle, a hungry little lifting of hips; Erik laughs, shifts position, leaves Charles panting and desperate for friction.

_That’s hardly fair!_

_I don’t hear you making an articulate argument for any other position._

_I—you—Erik, please!_

“Please what? This?” He wraps a hand around Charles’s beautifully swollen cock, hard and flushed with need; gets a small moan. _You like that?_

_Yes—_

_Good._

_But I meant—earlier—oh god do that again—I wanted to—to get to know you, to explore you—_

Oh. He remembers to breathe. Looks down into wide sapphire eyes. Reminds himself that for Charles, this is new in so many ways. _Yes. I’m sorry. What do you want to—_

 _No, this is good, you’re good, I like this, I only—_ Charles blushes, but doesn’t look away. _Can I touch you? Please?_

Erik moves the hand that’s been holding slim wrists; Charles blinks, hesitates, doesn’t sit up right away. It takes a second, but Erik realizes, and when he does he says, a little astonished but thrilled to the core, “Come here, please, Charles.”

Charles grins, sits up, permission given and accepted; kisses Erik’s lips, lightly, then his shoulder, then a bit lower, wandering pathways that drift across Erik’s chest, stomach, hips. He stops short of caressing Erik’s cock, but only just; his breath flutters across superheated arousal, and Erik fights back imminent eruptions and manages, panting, “Charles, do you want to suck my cock?”

Charles audibly inhales, and whispers, _yes…_

_Then do it._

Charles does. Tentatively at first, adjusting to the length, the sensation, the fullness; but he’s broadcasting the shivers of pleasure, the excitement, the heat that washes through them both when he licks the straining tip and drops of wetness spill over his tongue. Those eyes fall shut when Charles takes him deeper, relaxing into the motion now, and Erik puts a hand on his head and keeps him in place and Charles doesn’t physically tremble but the intensity streaks like fire through their vision.

They quiver on the edge for a quick second, and then Erik clutches at self-control and tugs on Charles’s hair, not hard, only enough to convey the idea; Charles slides up and lets Erik’s cock slip from his mouth, eyes huge and dark and drowned in desire.

“I want you,” Erik tells him, _I want to be inside you, to take you, to make you feel all of me, after._

_Yes Erik please—_

“Then lie down.” They have lubricants, scented oils and lotions, in the bedside drawer; Charles had bought most of them, and laughed for several minutes at Erik’s expression, confronted with the variety of options, after that first shopping excursion.

He picks pineapple, partly because Charles does like that one and partly because it’s the first one that comes to hand.

On the subject of hands, Charles tips his head to watch, as Erik’s moves between his legs. He looks perfectly anticipatory, not at all alarmed or virginal, though he does glance at Erik’s cock, suddenly, with a half-amused expression, as if reconsidering how these pieces might fit together.

But he doesn’t say stop, so Erik presses a finger inside him, opening him up, feeling that tightness yield and give way. Charles moans, a sound that’s probably meant to be Erik’s name but dissolves into wordless craving.

_More?_

Charles lifts his head, blinking, dazed. _What do YOU think?_

Erik laughs. More, then.

He moves fingers, once they’re inside, searching. Finds that particular place, right where he recalls it, particularly sensitive. Strokes.

Charles nearly screams. The hips snap up off the bed, pushing against his hand.

“Don’t be impatient,” Erik admonishes him, gently, “you can finish when I say,” and the midnight oceans of those eyes grow wider, but they listen, as Charles tries to still the shivering of all those muscles, against the bed.

“You do like this. When I tell you what I want, when I tell you what you can do, when I tell you that you are being good, for me…” _You are. You always are_.

Charles is past being verbal, now, incoherent pulses of need and lust and heat and broken incandescent surrender; but Erik picks up that last little flicker of impatience, cinnamon spice amid the aching sweetness, because even here Charles is still himself and still can never quite be good at waiting, when he wants something very badly. When he wants Erik, needs Erik, so very badly.

Charles _is_ still himself, at least in this. And Erik can give him this. They can be themselves, again, together.

Because he needs Charles equally as much, he says, “Now,” and strokes his fingers hard across that throbbing place, repeatedly, again and again, and Charles comes for him, on his fingers, gasping, cock untouched and spilling white stickiness over that tense stomach, all the freckles, pulses of liquid ecstasy.

Erik’s own cock is heavy and yearning between his legs, but he can’t resist one more flick of fingers, pushing that orgasm to the peak, and Charles tries to scream and curl up around his hand and sob his name all at once, and Erik pushes him back into the scattered pillows and slides his hand out—Charles, eyes closed, whimpers—and then plunges inside, into all that slick heat, muscles loose and euphoric and unprotesting.

He’s not gentle, even though he wants to be; he can’t help the motion becoming harder, though, faster, when Charles reaches for him, blindly running arms up and down his back, as if trying to hold Erik as tightly inside him as possible; Erik pants his name, and Charles moans, gorgeously responsive, and Erik lifts one of those parted legs and braces himself and thrusts, and Charles cries out and the pleasure floods over them both, not as sharply as the first time, but blissful, extended, dreamlike and decadent; and Erik feels the climax build and sweep across him, too, everywhere, pulling him into the heart of delight.

They stay very still, for an eternity, in the quiet. It’s not a soundless quiet. Soft breaths. The careful repositioning of arms. The small sigh when Erik slips out and then the second sigh, satisfaction, when he pulls Charles close to him again.

The rain tapdances, on the rooftop, on the windowpane. Too much energy, Erik decides, but he’s too comfortable, too unshakeably content, to mind.

 _Erik_ , Charles murmurs, and laughs, rippling languid echoes of fulfillment. _That was…you were…you are…_

“Charles,” Erik says, out loud because he can, because he can’t contain that feeling, has to let it out somehow. “Charles.” _I love you_.

“And I love you.” _I love your hand right there_.

“I—yes, you do. I know you do.” _You’ve…told me that before._

 _I have?_ “It’s still true, then.”

“Please don’t—you don’t remember that?” Not enough. Not enough, after all. After everything.

No. This will be enough. He will make it enough. Through sheer bloodyminded love and strength of will and the devotion of infinite days, every word he has to say again, every moment they’ll recreate or discover anew. It’ll all be new. And that will be all they need.

 _I am sorry_. Charles glances away. At the rain. “I wish—”

“I know. Don’t say that.” _You’re here._

 _Hold me_ , Charles asks, very silently. Erik reaches out arms, folds them around him, tucks Charles securely into the space that’s meant for him, always and forever, skin to skin. They fit together, in the pearl-grey remains of the afternoon.

Charles doesn’t quite fall asleep, lying there encircled by his arms; the breathing’s not regular enough for that, little inhales and exhales that float over cooling bodies. Erik doesn’t sleep either. Only rests his cheek against that tumble of exuberant hair, and breathes, and lets himself feel the weight of that familiar shape beside his.

The air is sweet, and chilled, and tastes of winter. Outside the festive lights will be coming on, flickering vividly at the boldest early stars. The whole world glowing with the holiday spirit. Christmas Day.

This bed, their bed, is warm. The blankets curl up at the base, near their feet, and settle in.

He closes his eyes, and holds onto Charles. Thinks, drifting, lazily, _home_.

Some time must pass, then. When he opens his eyes, it’s because he can feel the gaze resting on his face. And Charles is looking at him, too, wide-eyed and silent, lips parted in recognition.

The universe quakes. Turns over, with mute and inexpressible joy.

“Erik,” Charles says. _Erik_.

If he speaks, if he gives the hope a form, it might shatter. He waits, arrested by the eyes, by the voiceless crackle in the air.

“Erik,” Charles says again. “You sketched a bridge for me. In this bed.” _With chess-piece anchor-points, at the ends._

 _They’re decorative,_ Erik whispers.

_Like holiday costumes. Like…turning around, in a storage room, and seeing you smile._

The joy is piercing, quick and sharp as an arrow, so blinding it hurts, but exquisitely so. Kaleidoscopic. Dizzying.

Charles, meeting his eyes, laughs, wondering and elated and breathless, like the birth of a star.

“Charles,” Erik says, out loud, and then he’s laughing too, Charles in his arms and the mattress solid beneath them, the whole world fracturing into holiday-light rainbows and mirth.

 _I remember_ , Charles says, through the laughter, through Erik clutching his hands, through the gleeful cheering of the rain, _what I was going to ask you._

_You—wait, you remember—what were you—?_

_I do want to stay here. I WANT to stay here, I want everything, I love you—_

_Yes, you do, you love me and I love you—_

_The university,_ Charles says, kissing him soundly, _asked me to stay, I told you that, and what I wanted to ask you was—I know it’s fast, I know we’ve not even had a proper month together, but you know me like no one ever has and I know you and if you want to, if you want me, if you say you might someday want to—_

_Charles, will you marry me?_

“I was trying to ask you!” But Charles kisses him one more time, and doesn’t let go. _And yes!_

 

Charles does sell the company. To Logan. For the grand sum of one American dollar. And then accepts a permanent professorship at Columbia, after requesting, and receiving, funding for all his graduate students plus a bit extra to redesign the lab, employing any architect he might happen to like having involved in the process.

Erik builds bridges and skyscrapers and schools across the city, and gradually, in other cities too. People know his name. They tend to comment that he must have a good heart, despite the gruff demeanor. After all, he volunteers as Saint Nicholas in the traditional Xavier Company holiday festivities, every year. Sometimes he’s asked why he works a chess-piece design into every building, every sculpture, always someplace, small or large, hidden away or visibly grand. When those questions come up, he always smiles.

Erik and Charles get married two short weeks after the new year, the first available date, in the winter, under holiday lights and, halfway through, an uninvited and spectacularly heavy snowfall. The ceremony doesn’t stop, though, only pauses while Erik yanks off his own coat and wraps it around shorter shoulders. Raven and half the guests sigh out loud at the gesture, and the romance of it all.

Charles grins. _Like the night we first met._

_You mean the night you invited me out for coffee and introduced yourself as my elf?_

_The night you made me this._ Charles is holding the silvery star-shaped ornament, the one made out of those cheap elf-costume bells.

_…you saved that?_

_Of course. I thought perhaps we could put it up, somewhere. On the tree, if we ever manage to acquire one—the thought of me surrounded by Christmas trees really isn’t so adorable that you must tackle me into the bed every time, you know—_

_Yes it is._

_Not complaining. _—_ or hanging next to a menorah. If you want that. If you want to._

“Charles,” Erik says, aloud, “I do,” and Charles grins, and says the words right back, as the snow turns the world into a wonderland around them.


End file.
